applematters.com — This week marked a major milestone in the young and fast growing medium of podcasts- two popular podcasts are experimenting with two very different payment models and a third one is turning the world of film distribution on its head.
Feb 23, 2006 View in Crawl 4
commiecatFeb 23, 2006
There have been several posts about Gervais going to subscription but this is interesting in that it sort of goes into what might happen down the road if the podcast is a success as a subscription service.I adore Ricky Gervais and wish him all the best in the future - but going to a pay service at around $2/episode (I believe it's $6.95/mo. for "at leat" four episodes) is a bit much. You can get a licensed five-minute song for $.99, but two bucks for a half-hour of chat? I'll download it elsewhere, thanks.I really think (hope?) it's just a case of some corporate leech hearing them joke about not having charged for the original podcasts and having visions of dollar signs dancing through their head. I'd almost rather see blogs start going to subscription before podcasts. :( /rant-commiecat
devanjediFeb 23, 2006Submitter
@commiecat, I believe someone did the math that if 10% of the 250,000 subscribe, they would make close to $200,000 for the month. Considering this has been the most popular podcast of all time, it is the obvious choice for such a subscription model. The more free subscribers you have, the more paid you could have.
commiecatFeb 23, 2006
@Devan - don't get me wrong, I *understand* the logic, I just don't like it. And as I said, I certainly hope that it wasn't actually Gervais & Merchant who made this decision (and I don't really fault them for agreeing to it). It just seems to be so RIAAish.The real question is whether the podcast will have commercials or not. Guardian sponsored the initial ones and would have a little voice-clip after each segment (usually 5 or 6 a podcast) - "The Ricky Gervais show, brought to you by Guardian Unlimited" or something. So now are subscribers going to be paying to hear ads? Will marketers suddenly start paying for ad spots on the podcasts if they do generate a profit?Years ago you could watch an event or game, get commercials, and go back to the game. Now you have "Jerome Bettis' life story, brought to you by Nike" and "This shot of the field brought to you by AOL - as evident by the HUGE AOL logo digitally placed on said field" and "Kickoff of the FedEx Orange Bowl brought to you by Fannie Mae", etc...Just makes me feel kinda icky, ya know? Kudos to him - I'll be getting them from other source. -commiecat
devanjediFeb 23, 2006Submitter
I was actually adding to your point more than contradicting it. You are right- The Ricky Gervais Show, in its free incarnation, had advertisements from television shows and such (if I remember correctly). I think the free+advertisements model is fine; paid+advertisements is a bit much. In fact, I think you could get away with both simultaneously- where you would pay to get rid of advertisements- though ads are easy to skip in the digital world.