Annelies van den Belt, a flying Dutchwoman, quit as ITV’s (LSE: ITV) online head in April for upstart Moscow-based LiveJournal owner Sup. I caught up with her when she revisited London for Wednesday’s Association of Online Publishers conference.

SEE ALSO: Interview: Andrew Paulson, CEO, Sup: Russia’s Web Revolution, Making LiveJournal Pay

—ITV’s online target Twelve months ago, ITV set a goal of reaching £150 million annual income from online by 2010 - a mightily lofty target that this August was postponed by a whole two years. Wasn’t that target crazily ambitious, in retrospect? Van den Belt: “I was not part of the team that put together the revenue models. We’ll see, by 2012, whether it’s too ambitious or not. I believe in setting clear goals and targets for any business. It’s definitely a challenge; in a growing market, you need to set yourself a challenge.” A redesigned ITV.com has lately been making in-roads with its catch-up VOD. “It’s quite extraordinary to see how much they’ve changed in four months’ time. I can’t see their video because I’m overseas, which annoys me, but I love their products.”

—Friends Reunited: And what of the once-mighty, now increasingly marginalised ITV social network’s decision to drop its lucrative premium subscription stream in favour of ad support? “If you Google me, one of the things you’ll find is something I said at a conference - ‘the free ride is over’ - because I was a strong believer that newspapers should charge for news products like the crosswords and the archive, which is actually happening now seven years later. Freeconomics does work, so time is up (for premium). Good luck to them.”