Tom Goodwin: The unlikely secret to direct-to-consumer success

When I was eight I would go to the Hook Norton village shop and buy the TV Times and the Radio Times, it was our way to know what was on TV.
The Radio Times covered the BBC channels and even in the earliest stage of my ad land career I could tell it was a bit posh. The TV Times was downmarket; I knew this because the ads were for crap things. It had coupons to buy slippers that old people must have liked, and mail order firms that sold only trousers. These were companies that did one thing well