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They can’t be serious can they?

Ricky Gervais has decided to start charging for his podcast. According to Journalism.co.uk:

From 28 February users can download the four episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show series two for £3.75 from Audible or from the iTunes store. Individual shows are 95p each and the whole first series is £2.75.

I was a big fan of The Office but I wasn’t impressed with the Ricky Gervais Show. Now I’m even more disappointed.

I can understand why Gervais would want to make money off of the show. But imagine if you had to pay to read Boing Boing or to watch Rocketboom. Blogging, podcasting and vlogging are new media forms that thrive when content is free. And Rocketboom and Boing Boing have managed to make a profit without charging readers or viewers. Advertising has proven to be the key.

Pay-per-download seems like a very old fashioned way of using new media. In the past couple of months I’ve seen the Ricky Gervais Show discussed all over the Web, especially on US weblogs like this one. By putting up a paywall Gervais is cutting off a swathe of listeners, many of them from the valuable US audience that he could have cashed in on further down the road.

As it is, current commentary on the pay decision ranges from this (from a polite American):

You can thank these three English blokes for spoiling what was until now a podcast-world free of capitalism…Speaking as a fan of the first twelve free episodes that just concluded, this, quite frankly, blows.

To this (from a Brit in New York):

What a wanker.

One of the great achievements trumpeted about Gervais’ show has been his entry into the Guinness Book of Records for the most downloaded podcast. (Not the greatest of feats for such an infant media form.) It’s safe to say that those download figures are about to take a steep nosedive. It will be interesting to see how many listeners he loses.

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Harry’s Place serves up more Galloway entertainment. Interviewed in the Algerian El Khabar newspaper, he had this to say about the cartoon row:

Personally, I condemn these barbaric and evil acts. Today, the objective of the Western states is to control the oil of the Muslims whatever the price. In fact, the cartoons published in Denmark did not surprise me because the Western states have been waging fierce attacks against Islam for years. These began by humiliation, insults and then occupation. Today they reached the point of ridiculing the prophet. This incident is worse than the 11 September attacks in the US and the 7/7 incidents in London. Therefore, today it is the right of Muslims to express their anger and to defend their right and faith.

The waiter writes a particularly poignant post:

It’s the night before and the restaurant’s crammed with emergency personnel. A foursome walks in and demands to sit the back section. I tell them we’re having a medical crisis and the section’s closed. They don’t care and start arguing with me.

“You’re gonna sit us in the back right?” one of men says. “You’re gonna sit us in the back like we want right?”

“Do you see the paramedics working over there?” I say incredulously.

“Well, we want that table when it clears out,” the man huffs.

Read on here.

Today’s Blogarithms story in Metro features Callalillie. I know that I am not unique in thinking that Callalillie is one of New York’s best kept weblog secrets.

You can check out my story here. But why bother doing that when you can check out her excellent weblog here.