I Can Eat a Knob at Night...for $1.95*

You can thank these three English blokes for spoiling what was until now a podcast-world free of capitalism. Starting next week, The Ricky Gervais Show, a comedy podcast hosted by the creators of The Office (the British TV show and the American version), will begin charging fans $1.95 an episode, and $6.95 for a season (at least 4 episodes). Speaking as a fan of the first twelve free episodes that just concluded, this, quite frankly, blows.

I can't say I'm surprised by the move, considering how popular the show has become in the UK and in the US- it is currently the number two podcast on Apple's iTunes, and has just entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the most downloaded podcast ever (in the short history of podcasting) at over 5 million. If you have not had a chance to listen to the show yet, you can still grab the last four shows from the first (free) season here. However, there are a few references to previous episodes, so I recommend you listen to each show in chronological order. If you enjoyed The Office, you'll enjoy this.

You may think, "Hey mister 'I need an 63' Plasma and an RPG', what's with the cheapness, tighty tightwad?" My beef isn't so much the $1.95 they will now charge for something that was free just a week ago, but more so the precedent they're setting in monetizing the growing digital medium of open personal expression. My prediction is that this continues to be a successfully downloaded series, and not long after others will begin to follow suit. I currently subscribe to more than 10 podcasts, and although three are NPR and PBS podcasts, which will remain free (thank you Helena Rubinstein Foundation!), the other seven plus I imagine will begin charging a fee to download, and that is just some cold shit right there.

A simple alternative would be to use a traditional broadcast ad revenue model- sell audio ads at the beginning, middle, and end of the shows, but considering that podcasts are still a niche market and have not yet 'gone mainstream', I would guess it's still a hard sell to advertisers given the small but growing audience podcasts currently attracts.

Bottom line, the future doesn't bode well for podcasts, or for any free digital content currently available on the web for that matter. Where the line will be drawn eventually as to how 'free' the internet is...time will tell. All I can advise is, as Chuck D best put it: "Fight the powers that be."

*The title of this post references a recurring joke on The Ricky Gervais Show's podcast: During a discussion between hosts Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington about a reality TV show, where contestants were asked to eat an animal's penis, Karl commented that he could not eat an animal's penis in the morning because he has a delicate stomach.

Karl then proclaimed, "I could eat a knob at night."... After Gervais mused on the show that the soundbite could be used in a dance remix, within a few days the Internet filled with dance songs using the soundbite as a hook. Listen to these sound mixes here.