Comedian Ricky Gervais claims to have smashed his own Guinness Book of World Records tally for the most-downloaded Podcast, according to the BBC. The original GBWR-accredited figure, over 261K, looks to have been doubled - with the average claimed across the first series of the Ricky Gervais Show exceeding 540K.
The BBC story also says,
At the start of the second
series on 28
February, charges were introduced for the download, at £3.75
for
the first six episodes [in the second series] or 95p per instalment.
No separate figures have been made available for the number of listeners who continued to subscribe once the charge was introduced.
No separate figures have been made available for the number of listeners who continued to subscribe once the charge was introduced.
These chargeable downloads can be purchased at audible.co.uk and will come as a bit of surprise if you've read Gervais' take on his own site about about the original GBWR award. In that piece, Gervais is quoted as saying that he stuck out against his colleagues' wishes to charge for download,
"Steve [Merchant] and Karl
[Pilkington]
wanted to charge for the podcast. Just a pound they said. I said no.
We've had nearly 3 million downloads so far. It's difficult doing a
show with two people who won't talk to me now".
However, even though audible.co.uk is also selling the first series (for slightly less than Series Two), these can also be downloaded free from iTunes.
But are the Gervais podcasts as funny as the download figures suggest and, if so, have you bought into the chargeable versions? The place to tell us is the HEXUS.community.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community - discussion thread about this news brief
BBC - Gervais claims new podcast record
Ricky Gervais - about GBWR award
Rick Gervais - home page
audible.co.uk - home page
