Media Headliner: King of the gimmick takes charge of Discovery.(Discovery Networks Europe)(Dan Brooke appointed as the General Manager of Discovery's UK operations)

Dan Brooke, once famed for outrageous stunts, is now a pay-TV big-hitter capable of leading the network.

These are exciting times for Discovery Networks. Last week, its sponsorship of a top cycling team paid off when its rider, Lance Armstrong, won his seventh Tour de France. And then, this week, it announced that Dan Brooke, Channel 4's controller of digital channels, would soon be riding into Discovery's UK operation as its general manager.

Once nicknamed TV's 'king of the gimmick' for his love of out-rageous stunts while he was the marketing director of Paramount Comedy Channel, Brooke has matured into a man with a formidable reputation in the world of pay-TV via his stewardship of FilmFour and then E4.

An erstwhile adman, he worked at Chiat Day and St Luke's for six years in the early 90s, and was rewarded for the successful launch of E4 with a promotion in 2003 to managing director of Channel 4's 4 Channels division, overseeing pay-TV, interactive TV and online. However, it looks as if Channel 4's retrenchment from pay-TV under its chief executive, Andy Duncan, (involving E4 going free-to-air on Freeview, with FilmFour expected to follow suit) may have restricted Brooke's development.

Brooke doesn't necessarily see it like this, but his move to Discovery will certainly put him right back at the coalface of pay-TV, working across nine Discovery brands and negotiating deals with the likes of Sky for carriage of the channels.

He says there was still plenty to do at Channel 4: 'Channel 4 is strengthening its core business in UK TV - the switch from analogue to digital - so it looks like its commitment to pay-TV is decreasing, but it is still facing the big strategic question of how it capitalises on the opportunity of pay-TV.'

Brooke replaces his former colleague David Abraham in the role at Discovery (the two worked together at St Luke's, where Abraham was the managing director). Abraham left in February to take the role of senior vice-president at Discovery's US brand The Learning Channel.