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The speed at which 4oD, Channel 4's video-on-demand service that launched last week, has come to market is a source of great pride to Andy Taylor, Channel 4's managing director of new media.

Channel 4's list of firsts in this area makes impressive reading. It previewed The IT Crowd online in January, generated 500,000 PC views of promotional episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives and launched its own simulcast in June.

This instinct to blaze a trail in online - even if that also means being the first to make certain mistakes - is something that pre-dates Taylor, and yet doesn't.

As managing director of Victoria Real, he was involved in Big Brother's mobile and online elements from the first series in 2000, and he points to innovations around that programme as key signposts on the current road.

"The early Big Brothers always did something completely different," he says. "Big Brother 1 was the biggest entertainment website the UK has ever seen; Big Brother 2 was the first ever SMS vote; Big Brother 3 saw the first ever red-button games and votes. This year, we have kind of done the same with VOD."

Taylor's most regular reference point for 4oD is iTunes and its proposition - a comprehensive menu of programmes from the past 30 days and a selective archive of classics from down the years, priced at 99p to rent for one view or £1.99 to own - is equally simple.

Cautionary tale

Given the threat posed to broadcasters by illegal technologies such as Bit Torrent and grey-area usage on services like YouTube, the music industry's unhappy experience certainly represents a worthwhile cautionary tale and it is clearly one that Taylor has been studying.

"There are some really big, key learnings I take from the music industry," he says. "One is that we can definitely help ourselves by moving as quickly as possible to make content available legally. Another is that the music sites that really dominate today are the ones, like Pandora and Last.fm, which really embrace functionality and navigation and all that sort of stuff."

Come April 2007, when Channel 4 plans to introduce ads to the 4oD service in a manner as yet unspecified, the true significance of VOD as a media vehicle can be evaluated. "There are some really good, exciting ad models emerging," says Taylor. "It is very, very early days and there is nothing pinned down. But we are in conversations with the ad community."

Certainly, as Andy Duncan stated at last week's launch, the 4oD product that becomes available on 6 December will doubtless be very different from the one we see in a year or five years' time.

Nonetheless, the service, which commands an investment equivalent to a new channel launch, is budgeted to break even by year three and the broadcaster is expecting both strategic and commercial returns.

"This is not a bolt-on," says Taylor. "One of the strengths of this service is that it hasn't just been driven by the new-media department - it has involved people from technology, scheduling and marketing. The whole channel has worked to deliver it, so it feels like part of the channel."

Key strands

In terms of Taylor's wider brief, repurposing content for services such as 4oD and Channel 4's simulcast represents one of three key strands of new-media activity. The other two are the provision of supporting new-media material for programme brands, which Taylor says will move into another gear entirely in 2007, and the development of stand-alone online properties such as 4Docs.

"It is a case of having to think about what Channel 4 can offer in that area - what is unique about Channel 4, what people like about Channel 4," he says.

To Taylor, it must seem like a long six years since he left his job as a corporate and media lawyer to take on the in-house business affairs role at Victoria Real. "Everybody moans about the law, but you are trained to be very conservative, which means no one ever leaves," he says. "But I made a break for it."

Moving on from Victoria Real in 2003, just as the company was bought by Endemol, Taylor made his way directly to former client Channel 4.

He now finds himself at the cutting-edge of the broadcaster's future-proofing initiatives. 4oD alone is a project of huge strategic importance. Will it succeed? Well, very simply, it has to. Certainly, it will be worth watching, in more ways than one.

CV

2003: Managing director of new media, Channel 4

2003: Head of interactive, Channel 4

2000: Managing director, Victoria Real

2000: Head of legal and commercial affairs, Victoria Real

Pre-2000: City lawyer, ultimately with Dibb Lupton Alsop.