Gervais adopts pay-per-Pilkington model
In late-breaking monkey news, the most-downloaded podcast in the world (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), featuring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington, will move to a paid format as from next week, following on from its successful first-season run of 12 episodes. The groundbreaking first series — which became the world’s number one podcast within just a handful of half-hour episodes — was freely hosted by the Guardian and was arguably funnier than The Office or anything else in history (although the final episodes were marred by some inane, unfunny ads for Channel Four UK Friday night comedy).In the just-released 12th episode, Gervais says of the new series, which will start on Tuesday 28 February: “We may have to charge a small fee for it because it will cost us money and Karl is unemployed.”
Karl Pilkington, the podcast’s round-headed star, has become an unlikely internet icon; thanks to astonishing excerpts from his diary, assorted bootleg merchandise and his curious fact-free renderings of nature and the world around him. The normally hard-of-thinking Pilkington had urged his co-presenters to charge £1-per-download from the outset, so was understandably miffed when the podcast quickly hit five million downloads.
A link to the new pay-per-Pilkington series can be found at the Ricky Gervais website, with further information here. The new series will cost $6.95 (presumably US dollars) for “at least” four new, weekly, full-length episodes (and possibly more). From Tuesday 7 March you’ll be able to access episodes from the original podcast series via the Gervais website, in case you missed any.
All I’m saying is, you read about it first at some blog you went to and that.
posted by Chris Bell at 10:40 AM
3 Comments:
I've just noticed this in Mark Egan's Reuters piece about Pilkington becoming an internet icon, from Vanity Fair's media critic, Michael Wolff, talking about media companies trying to figure out the podcasting phenomenon. Apparently, they're: "like deers caught in the headlights again". Deers. Bless him.
This is going to make the podcast world go nuts. There's going to be paid podcasts from EVERY COMEDIAN ON THE PLANET if Gervais and co pull this off.
In this case, David, I think the first mover advantage will be everything. And apart from Simon Pegg and the League of Gentlemen, who else would listeners pay to hear in podcast format? Micropayments is one thing, but $6.95...? The first series may have successfully 'evangelised' the idea and converted fans, but it remains to be seen how many will be willing to start paying for something that was once free. The next few weeks certainly promises to be very interesting.
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