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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.

***

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.

I leave for Europe in three days. Deadlines loom. Many things need canceling. Numerous things need packing. Blogging may suffer.

My copy of 2005: Blogged arrived yesterday. If you aren’t already aware it’s a kind of Best of British for the past year, compiled by Tim Worstall. (There’s even a post by a certain EiNY.) I’ve had a quick flick through and it contains some writing that goes a long way towards supporting Tim’s idea that someone should really be syndicating blogs to the print media. For a review by Rafael Behr in the Observer, see here.

And if you think 2005: Blogged may make a nice stocking filler then don’t forget about Blog, the book I worked on over the past year. Obviously, I’m biased (I contributed about one-third of the interviews in the book) but I have to say that many of the ideas and insights from bloggers and blogging experts are still being discussed today and will be discussed for years to come. Plus, if you buy a copy my editors will make money which will finance them to pay me for future book projects For a review by Hugh Hewitt in the New York Post see here.

Links for today:
How blogging can help the regional UK press (via journalism.co.uk)

One of the biggest criticisms of weblogs is that they are not “fact-checked like the media.” Next time you read or hear that just remember this about mainstream media reports of death, destruction and mayhem in New Orleans:

But the basic premise of the article that introduced the New Orleans helicopter sniper to a global audience was dead wrong, just like so many other widely disseminated Katrina nightmares. No 7-year-old rape victim with a slit throat was ever found, even though the atrocity was reported in scores of newspapers. The Convention Center freezer was not stacked with 30 or 40 dead bodies, nor was the Superdome a live-in morgue. (An estimated 10 people died inside the two buildings combined, and only one was slain, according to the best data from National Guard officials at press time.)

Reason: They Shoot Helicopters, Don’t They?: How journalists spread rumors during Katrina by Matt Welch

Links for today:
My OJR story being discussed in Germany (via Martin Stabe)
Ricky Gervais to podcast
The left-wing Neocons (via Clive Davis)