4057
OK, so I was just kidding about the daily snooker podcasts. Chris Hamilton tweeted me as midnight approached saying "afraid there may be suicides among Me1/Me2 fans if you do not stick to your promise and deliver a new frame in next 19 mins". But that's one way to bring the listenership down to zero.
Orange Mark from the British Comedy Guide sent me the download figures for all the podcasts today and the snooker numbers are still heading downwards. 32463 people have downloaded frame 1, though a third of them didn't feel like listening to the second frame or some reason with only 20511 listeners thus far. The numbers drop quite sharply with only 11408 tuning into frame 10 and 7110 still with my by frame 20. The decline slows after that but still continues hemorrhaging listeners (with only a couple of blips where numbers go up) but by frame 41 only 4001 diehard fans are keeping up with the antics of Me1 and Me2 (why are they listening to this and not rewatching Die Hard?). It's still more than I would have imagined would have made it this far, but I was expecting green shoots (green shots) of recovery and for the numbers to rise at some point. Congratulations to those of you who are still doggedly downloading (how many of you are actually listening though?). You are right, this is the best piece of comedy ever created by humankind. And the longer it continues the better it becomes. And you are part of the joke. You wasting your time listening to it is just as (if not more) important than me wasting my time doing it. And perhaps the funniest thing about it is that some people are getting as far as frame 41 before deciding that they've had enough of this and this podcast is not for them. As long as one person is downloading this I will keep doing it.
And for those of you interested in this kind of thing, the RHLSTP audio downloads are much more impressive. Surprisingly the Stephen Fry one is not the most popular one. Here's the guests who have accrued over 100,000 listeners
1 David Mitchell: 140,947
2 Stewart Lee 132,950
3 Charlie Brooker: 121,777
4 Iannucci & Linehan: 116,060
5 Stephen Fry 111,389
6 Tim Minchin 100,957
Obviously some of these have been up for quite a long time - though it's good to see that pretty much all the episodes from the most recent series are already over 60,000 downloads. These are pretty incredible numbers. If I could only persuade everyone who had ever downloaded any of these podcasts to give me a pound then I could use that money to create ever more exciting internet comedies (and film every frame of Me1 Vs Me2 snooker). I am not sure the paid video downloads of RHLSTP are really going to work out. The first lot we did turned a modest profit, but the second lot have really just broken even. We're going to film the next series, but I think that might be the last one in video format. We are looking into ways that we can fund this and other work (and perhaps RHLSTP works better in audio format anyway, or at least is more easily digested in that way) and thinking of interesting ways we can claw back the money it will cost us to make Meaning of Life. But I am mainly happy that the stuff I am doing is getting out there to people. One of the main ways you can pay me back, as always, is to just let people know about the existence of all this stuff (maybe save the snooker until they've been hooked in by one of the more mainstream projects!) It's nearly six years since I started doing podcasts. Progress has been slow but steady. I am pleased with what I have achieved, but I'd love to do more. Are you an eccentric millionaire? Or do I just need a million eccentrics with a pound to spare?
For those of you really interested in the decline and fall of the snooker podcast then here are those figures in full
Frame 42: 1900 (after just one day)
Frame 41: 4001
Frame 40: 3922
Frame 39: 4553
Frame 38: 6924 (live frame - big leap up followed by massive decline)
Frame 37: 5602
Frame 36: 5829
Frame 35: 6568
Frame 34: 6116
Frame 33: 5892
Frame 32: 6111
Frame 31: 6475
Frame 30: 6423
Frame 29: 7324
Frame 28: 6910
Frame 27: 7800
Frame 26: 6946
Frame 25: 7074
Frame 24: 7474
Frame 23: 6894
Frame 22: 7336
Frame 21: 7223
Frame 20: 7110
Frame 19: 7315
Frame 18: 8349
Frame 17: 7935
Frame 16: 8002
Frame 15: 8087
Frame 14: 10537
Frame 13: 11742
Frame 12: 10551
Frame 11: 11091
Frame 10: 11408
Frame 9: 12424
Frame 8: 12567
Frame 7: 13374
Frame 6: 13614
Frame 5: 14364
Frame 4: 15399
Frame 3: 16707
Frame 2: 20511
Frame 1: 32463
