Ricky Gervais Podcast Season 2 - At a price
Posted on February 19, 2006
Filed Under Business, Podcasting |
The Ricky Gervais Show new series
I have thoroughly enjoyed the The Ricky Gervais Podcast, finding myself laughing out loud at the nonsense that comes out of Karl’s mouth and reactions from Ricky and Steve. It has been proven that laughter is good for the body, and their 30 minutes a week is one of my sources. But will it be worth $6.95USD for at least 4 episodes from Audible.com?
It will be interesting to see how what this does to the subscription rate of the self proclaimed “most downloaded podcast”. Even if they maintain 10% of the current subscribership, it will probably make them more than the current show’s ad revenue. But the new series had better not have ads if I’m going to pay to listen to it.
This will also be the first non-sex/porn related podcast of some acclaim, that I know of, that will be available for a fee. This will seed a lot of discussion in the podcast community, along with many people observing the success of the new Ricky Gervais Show revenue model.
With all the FREE podcasts available, do you think that demand will be large enough for this show to be profitable? Do you think that it is over priced for possibly only 4 episodes? How about the fact that the show shifted from free to fee-based? Is that a new model? Put it out there for free, then once you get big enough, make it fee-based (i.e. bait-and-switch). You’ll lose a large percentage of listeners, but if the numbers were large enough, the remainder will be a decent revenue stream.
Recall show #1, Ricky said “We are doing it for no money…. because I like to be in a room with Karl Pilkington”. Seems like 12 weeks have changed Ricky’s position on that, now he wants to get paid for being in a room with Karl.
Comments
One Response to “Ricky Gervais Podcast Season 2 - At a price”
Leave a Reply
[…] Aside from the few large podcasters that can go the route of Ricky Gervais, there is not a sustainable revenue model (yet) for podcasting. The old media advertising model does not fly, which is why it has hardly gotten off the ground. Take the Earthlink ads at PodShow, in particular Steve Gillmor’s pleading with listeners to “give them the respesct they deserve”. At which point I hit >>| (that’s fastforward for all you non-iPodders) for the next 30 seconds. […]