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POSTSCRIPT:
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

I wrote the introduction to this book in August 2003. Idea A Day had been up
and running for three years during which time over 1,000 ideas had been
published. Myself and my partners in the site were confident that we had
created something unique and of value. Whenever we talked to anyone about
Idea A Day, however, we would invariably be asked what we had achieved
and, unfortunately, simply replying that we had kept a website online since
the year 2000 or that we had a book coming out in 2004, just didn’t cut it.
People wanted to hear about ideas that had ‘been done’, and done in such a
way that they might have heard of them. Writing the introduction, I couldn’t
imagine that readers of this book would think any differently.

As it happened, it was in August that Jay Pond-Jones, an Idea A Day
subscriber since day one, invited me to attend a meeting at the marketing
group Chime PLC. Jay had previously been the creative director of a number
of London advertising agencies and had recently been appointed Head of
Content at Chime. Part of his brief was to explore new ideas and angles for
television, with a particular regard to developing advertiser funded
programming. Chime were already working with David Brook, a television
executive, who had been the marketing director of The Guardian and Channel
5 and most recently Director of Strategy at Channel 4. David was planning a
move into the world of multi-channel television, where the bingo channel
Avago and The Thomas Cook Channel had begun to demonstrate that
companies and brands could make television and make money without

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