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General discussion

Ricky Gervais podcast going fee based

Feb 21, 2006 7:30PM PST

I think this sucks, not least because we already have 2 adverts in the podcast, and that it is promoted by a newspaper that invariably has paid for the Podcast in the first place.

Now we are asked to pay to receive it!

Well, lets get this straight. He gets nearly 3 million downloads, then the next moment he's announcing a

Discussion is locked

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We'll see how it pans out
Feb 22, 2006 1:26AM PST

I haven't listened to Gervais' podcast, but I find most of what he does to be quite funny. They might have had this planned from the get-go, building up the podcast's popularity and spread, by having it free, only to start charging for it at a later time.

In a free market such as ours on the Internet, where no one is -forced- to buy a product, we will soon see if this was in fact a good idea, or if it was a bad idea. I am sure they have set some kind of margin, at which they say e.g., "if we only keep 10% of our listeners, it was worth it financially."

I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. Even as a person with a low income, I prefer to pay for things, even if they are available for free. It just.. tastes better? Oh, and it gives me the right to really complain and whine about things, if I've paid for it.

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Perhaps
Feb 22, 2006 6:36AM PST

The success of fee based TV and videos on itunes is helping podcasters to dip a toe into the waters of fee based podcasts.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I know that I pay less than $1 per channel on my dish network per month. So for me to pay for a podcast; the pricing is going to have to be along those same lines.

Scott

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Is it worth it?
Feb 22, 2006 1:04PM PST

I love the show but like many others I won't pay for it.... I'll just listen to other funny shows. I'm afraid that although they claim to get 250,000 downloads how many of those are willing to pay $2 a show?

Will they drop the ads in the show... I would hope so becuase that'd piss me off if I paid and still got ads... just like cable tv Grin