Duo plan paid-for podcasts

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish are to produce a series of comedy podcasts, which the BBC hopes to sell.

Production is expected to begin on the hour-long shows next month, ready for distribution by the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

The company is currently discussions with Apple over how much to charge for the podcasts on iTunes.

Cornish told trade magazine Broadcast: ‘We're trying to see how low iTunes can possibly set the charge, but they have a strict set of pricing format rules so it's not a free-for-all.

Very few artists have had any success with paid-for podcasts, with Ricky Gervais a rare exception to the rule – but he lost a large proportion of his record-breaking audience when a charge was introduced..

Adam & Joe currently host a Saturday morning show on BBC digital station 6 Music, the highlights of which are available as a free podcast.

But Buxton said he was happier with the podcasts they previously made with XFM – which combined broadcast material with additional sketches, and were downloaded a total of 450,000 times last year

He said: ‘The only podcast available from us at the moment is highlights of our 6 Music programme and they're always bits that I'm less enthusiastic about.

‘It was nice doing podcasts for XFM because we edited them ourselves and put extra bits in there that hadn't been on the show. That's what we'll do in a month or two with BBC Worldwide.’

Buxton has also made a pilot sketch show for BBC3,called MeeBox, ‘a vague spoof of YouTube’.

Published: 6 Mar 2008