Peter Fincham: looking good for C4

A desperate game of musical chairs in the upper echelons of commercial TV could see Peter Fincham, the former BBC1 controller who famously lost his job nearly two years ago over 'Crowngate', move into the chief executive's chair at Channel 4. The talk behind the scenes at the Edinburgh TV festival at the weekend was that Fincham is favourite to replace Andy Duncan, C4's current chief exec.

Fincham has been working as director of television at ITV since he lost his job at the BBC over the scandal that blew up in October 2007 when it emerged that a promo film about the documentary A Year with the Queen had been falsely edited. The promo suggested the Queen had stormed out of a photo session with Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz.

When Buckingham Palace duly complained, Fincham became the highest profile of a raft of executives to lose their jobs.

There are two reasons why Fincham is in the frame to move from ITV to C4:

First, Andy Duncan is expected to announce his departure from C4 any day and needs to be replaced. He is thought to be stepping down by mutual consent after failing to secure the channel's financial future in a series of negotiations with the government.

Duncan's job was to ensure that the white paper 'Digital Britain', published in July, included a solution to the £100m-a-year funding gap at C4 caused by falling advertising revenues. He lobbied hard for a solution that would involve C4 setting up a joint venture with BBC Worldwide, the corporation's money-making arm, but to no avail. 'Digital Britain' included no such proposal and instead concentrated on a quite different plan to take funds from the BBC licence fee to pay for regional news on ITV.

Duncan might have hoped to stay on at C4 until the end of the year when the channel's chairman, Luke Johnson, is also due to leave. But sources in Edinburgh believe his departure is imminent.

Asked in Edinburgh to comment on his future, Duncan tried to dismiss the speculation - but could not officially deny that his departure has been agreed. "It is rumour, speculation and gossip, it is Edinburgh," he said. "There is nothing to tell, there has been no board meeting and no vote of no confidence."

The second reason why Fincham is being mooted for the C4 role is that he probably won't be wanted as director of television at ITV by whoever is appointed chief executive there to replace Michael Grade, who announced earlier this year that he was standing down as executive chairman, though staying on as non-executive chairman.

The favourite for the ITV job, after the withdrawal of frontrunner Simon Fox from HMV, is Tony Ball, a former head of BSkyB. Ball is said to have the backing of key shareholders in the increasingly troubled commercial station.

If 53-year-old Fincham does get the C4 job it will mark a return to having a creative TV mind heading the channel, in the tradition of Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Grade, Michael Jackson and Mark Thompson. Duncan was the first chief executive in the channel's history not to have programme-making experience. ·