A new type of Podcast?

Be afraid Cameron, be very afraid!  Well not Cameron specifically but no-one else is reading this!

The Guardian has just announced that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (writers of The Office) are creating a weekly (radio) show and releasing it for free on the Internet via The Guardian website.

"I want to do a radio show where I can say what I want, when I want for as long as I want and that's free for anybody who can be bothered to listen anywhere in the world," said Gervais.

I think the biggest threat to Podcasting are organisations such as the BBC and now The Guardian, who don't have a pure commercial interest in releasing material and hence much of it will be free download audio/podcasts.

Each of us listeners have only a limited number of hours per day listening time.  I have a max of 2 hours travelling time, unless I listen whilst I'm working at my PC.  So there's only so much I can fit into those 2 hours.  And guess what.  My tastes are changing, moving away from Adam Curry's Daily Source Code towards my addictive diet of the BBC's Fighting Talk, Sportsweek, and Rumour Mill, as well as The Chris Evans Show (forgive me!).  And now The Office guys.
I only have 7 more slots in the week, and I listen to most of G'Day World, and The Personal Productivity Show, so there's not much listening time left to fill, and I suspect more BBC and Guardian shows will be coming out soon, and that's even before the BBC open their archive.

And another thing.  Sport is big for me.  Without exception, not one of my list of RSS feed webloggers I read, remotely wrote about George Best dying.  Ok, sport isn't big for some of the webloggers I read, and some are openly hostile to sport and don't get it. But I think it's time for some new friends, and to add some webloggers who do take a sporting edge, not that I've found any yet, but I haven't been looking hard.  Mind you, I still have some Newcastle United dickheads to deal with in the comments of that post.  I read the last (Phil Rooney) comment which I've stupidly replied to, and I wonder why I love sport or people who are passionate about sport.

Comments

[Cameron Reilly]

hey I'll listen to Gervais! I agree that there is a huge amount of content out there that the radio stations and TV stations will be able to release. I was talking with the Head of the BBC's interactive division yesterday about this and told her I'd pay money for the back catalogue of Parky. Just think of all his interviews with Orson Welles!

But I don't see this as a huge concern for podcasters because our costs are low and we can live on air. Any audience for podcasters is positive.

But the problem for the traditional guys is that this proliferation of content can ONLY mean for them a REDUCTION in audience. They have all evolved in an environment of limited product. They are about to enter the era of UNLIMITED product at zero cost. Can the economics of their business model cope with the sudden introduction of unlimited amounts of free content?

I'm trying to think of a good analogy from history but so far I haven't been able to come up with one.

[Jett Loe]

You're absoulutely right = there's only so many hours in the day - the thing is I find now that I have far less time for 'crap' or stuff that's only 'so-so' - cause we do have a seemingly unlimited amount of content available now don't we.

p.s. have noticed that some of the big podcasts recently, Twit, Diggnation, seem to be falling in quality - the participants don't seem to be too into it - and are not really there for PUTTING ON A SHOW for us listeners - so, first signs of the shakeout?

p.p.s - being a podcast out of Belfast of course we talk about George Best! :-)