stuart test blog

Sad news today… The Ricky Gervais Show just released the last episode in the first series. This extremely popular podcast had been at the number 1 spot on the Apple Podcast directory for the last couple of months boasting over 2 million downloads per month.

What’s even more sad is that they are now pulling the free podcast and replacing it with a paid version that needs to be downloaded through the Audible website. This really annoys me – a typical example of greed taking over. I’m sure that many people will pay money to download it but nowhere near 2 million per month – I’ll be surprised if they get a 10th of that.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why it was so popular:

• It’s funny. Yes, no doubting the comical genius here. Adward-winning Ricky and Stephen compliment each other well while Karl provides the dim-witted humour which has now made him into a cult on the net.
• It’s easy to download. Apple’s iTunes software makes subscribing and downloading to the podcast incredibly easy. The show was listed as the no. 1 podcast in the directory and a single click later and it’s on your iPod. Not everyone would have used iTunes to download it but I’m betting it would have been more than 95%.
• It’s free. Need we say more? Just like public television, or radio, or any other podcast, it didn’t cost a cent to download. In the last couple of episodes the adverts were becoming slightly more prominent, but they were funny themselves and didn’t ruin the show.

Now about to head into the second season of the show, two out of the three reasons for downloading it are gone. You now have to register with the Audible site, hand over credit card details and pay money to download the half hour episodes. Also, you’ll need to install seperate software from the Audible site to be able to download the episodes and synchronise them with the iPod.

It was looking like The Ricky Gervais Show was heading towards becoming a cult classic, like The Office, but now it may end up being remembered as the show that shot itself in the foot by letting greed take over. I hope this commercial ‘experiment’ fails.