Ricky, Ricky, Ricky… Podcasting ‘Legend’ Gervais Jumps The Shark
Trumped as the biggest UK Podcast by a comedian, the Ricky Gervais Podast did very well for The Guardian newspaper, and the 13 episodes are still freely available around the internt. With one of the top podcast in iTunes, and about three million downloads, Gervais certainly rose very quickly thanks to his star name, UK media interest, and having material that many people actually find funny. A quick disclaimer, I’m not a fan of Gervais, I don’t find him funny, but I’m glad his podcast got more people interested via the halo effect he had.
But today could very well be the Jump the Shark day for Gervais, Merchant and the rest of the podast team. Audible have announced that the second ‘season’ of podcasts will be available through themseleves, at a cost of $1.95 an episode or $6.95 a season (note that they’re saying the season will have a minimum of four shows and then they start a new parapgraph…). Ouch
Okay I have a lot of problems with this. Let’s face it, Audible will probably have given him an advance, and they do make a fair amount of money selling audio books, but the system and the thinking behind this switch are interesting. First of all I think this is a great move business wise from Audible, but as a listener you’re going to need an Audible compatible media player or desktop software to play the actual file. Yes the Apple iPods carry this, but standalone MP3 players don’t. PSP’s don’t. Winamp doesn’t. So they’re locking out a lot of people before they even start. Audible don’t use MP3, they have a format with DRM capability, which is a discussion for another day. But to borrow Cory Doctorow’s turn of phrase; “a quarter of a million people didn’t wake up today and decide that they wanted to pay Ricky Gervais to do an audio show that was less usable than the ones he’s been doing with The Guardian.”
But with a quarter of a million listeners, this is prime advertising space and I’m surprised that someone from commercial radio didn’t think to use that number instead of a jump to a subscription service. If I can finance a month’s worth of travel and conference attendance to run The Tech Conference Podcast Shows in March from BarCampLA, Etech, SXSW and Mix06, the what could Gervais have raised? If money was the objective (and I’m open to any other ideas on the reasoning behind this) then surely there are better routes than having to start building a listener base again from scratch? The RSS feed on the last shows were all pointing at an XML feed at The Guardian’s website. Do you honestly think they’ll be happy enough to point that URL towards Audible’s web server?
So Gervais audio cast (now I’m not even sure if we can call it a podcast…) will start with zero listeners, promises a minimum of four episodes and one preview, and will be available soon. Part of me hopes he succeeds, he validates the space, and proves a new business model (After all, it’s nice to have a big name that’s not Podshow). But another part of me has a really bad taste in my mouth as I watch someone lock out the most important resource he has. The listeners.
For someone who ‘gets it’, I’m surprised at Ricky. I’m fond of quoting his decision to put his tv shows on BBC2 because he understood that not everyone would get his comedy, therefore he didn’t want to appeal to a mass audience. That is, afterall, a big part of what makes a podcast successful; you appeal to your niche.
I respect his decision to do a podcast, rather than a repackaged radio show, a la Ross Noble, but I agree with the sentiment here that cutting out a large part of your audience is not to your advantage.
I wonder if he fully understands this, or has he been sold on the idea by a marketing man, perhaps even by Karl Pilkington who, according to Ricky on the podcast, is the one who will benefit financially from the new deal?
On the subject of Pilkington, is it a non-brainer to say he can’t be half the fool he acts on the podcast?
btw, I should add if the last 2 Gervais podcasts are anything to go by, he may also have jumped the shark in terms of content; they were weak in comparison with the earlier episodes.
I liked the shows well enough to d/l the first dozen, but the reasons given for charging (it costs to host this stuff) is weak at best and sounds more like an excuse to make some (more) cash.
I’m pretty sure that the hosting company, who were mentioned without fail every week, would be happy to carry on. And maybe, who knows, the Guardian would pay to continue offering the “world’s most popular podcast”.
Not to mention they had (very poor) ad’s for Channel 4 comedy in the last couple of episodes too.
Finally, not to sound too cynical, I can’t see Ricky Gervais or Steve Merchant scrabbling for loose change down the back of the sofas in their local Starbucks to pay for hosting…
I like the podcasts, but nowhere near enough to pay for and CERTAINLY not enough to join iTunes for.
If, as they said, they can get 300+ dance remixes and thousands of pic’s of Karl Pilkington, then a Paypal tip jar would pay enough to buy the poor guy a new car, house in Spain and his own iPod.
Hear, hear to Ewan’s post. It was thinking like Ewan’s which convinced me not to go down the charging route on the Smartphones Show. I just don’t think people will pay and it puts another obstacle in the way of people listening/watching.
Steve Litchfield
The Smartphones Show
Nice linkbaiting Steve. :-)
I think Ricky et al will do very well out of charging for the show. Personally, I won’t fork out the money though. THere just TOO MUCH free good stuff out there for me to get though as it is.
I agree with Cameron. I think he’ll still do well out of charging. In my non-tech office, we’ve got around 40 people working here, and 3 have already said they will definitely pay for it. We all own iPods so the tech barrier isn’t a problem. Incidently I wouldn’t pay for any other podcast. I haven’t heard any other podcast that entertains me to warrant paying for it.