{"id":1413,"date":"2006-02-21T22:21:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-21T22:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2006\/02\/ricky_gervais\/"},"modified":"2006-02-21T22:21:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-21T22:21:37","slug":"ricky_gervais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/ricky_gervais\/","title":{"rendered":"Ricky Gervais"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last twelve weeks, the Ricky Gervais podcast has been at the top of the iTunes chart in both Britain and the US. Indeed it even got awarded a Guinees Book of Records award as the most listened to podcast (albeit that there are other podcasts out there, distriubtedly significantly beyond iTunes, that may also be potential bestsellers).
\nGiven that Ricky Gervais has a commercially strong product, the question was bound to be asked: “Why don’t we charge for each episode?”
\nWell now, it seems<\/a>, they are.
\nNow I’ve listened for the last 12 weeks and enjoyed the programme, going back each week, but I won’t be forking out, even 95p, for further editions. Advertising support I can appreciate, but it’s not so<\/em> good that I’d actually pay for what effectively are just ramblings. While they may do some preperation for the show, I don’t feel I’d be paying for skilled performers giving us material that I’d otherwise not get. It’s good radio – and all the radio I listen to is free (or paid for via advertising or my value-for-money licence fee).
\nIt’s a shame that the BBC has yet to offer any of its comedy programming as podcasts – I suppose there’s too much value in selling CDs later. To that end, I must recommend Virgin Radio’s very own Al Murray<\/a> as one of the best free comedy shows that you can now download, for free, in a non-proprietry format. And while you’re at it, get The Geoff Show<\/a> too.
\nThere’s another reason why I won’t be buying it. The deal has been done with Audible<\/a>. Now Audible programming is available via iTunes, but without first burning the show onto CD and then re-ripping, that’s no use for my Creative Zen Touch or Sony PSP. And in any case, even at its highest quality, I’m not especially happy with the sound quality of Audible’s codecs. I have bought a couple of books and plays via iTunes, and been through the ‘burning a CD and then ripping it back’ process and it doesn’t do the sound any favours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last twelve weeks, the Ricky Gervais podcast has been at the top of the iTunes chart in both Britain and the US. Indeed it even got awarded a Guinees Book of Records award as the most listened to podcast (albeit that there are other podcasts out there, distriubtedly significantly beyond iTunes, that may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}