On the advertising model

I've spoken here before about podcast financing, specifically my preference for paid downloads/subscriptions vs advertising. Warren Ellis sent me the following yesterday, from James Cridland's Radioland newsletter:

Adam Curry, the co-inventor of podcasting, spoke at a Christian radio conference about where he sees the future of radio. The future is local, he said. There’s a link to watch the whole thing, too. (Adam Curry is working on Godcaster, an on-demand radio player specifically for faith-based broadcasters.)
Christian radio is not a thing in many countries. Radio stations owned by religious groups were illegal in the UK until 1990, as one example; but in the US, faith-based radio is thriving.
A few years ago, I spoke at Momentum 24, the Christian Music Broadcasters conference. It was a radio conference, but it was unlike any radio conference I’ve ever spoken at. The conference was positive, exciting, with so much discussion about how radio is an integral part of their mission. I didn’t hear one comment about how radio was dying, or concern about getting younger people to listen.
Christian radio is not in the doldrums that the rest of the industry finds itself in. A large part of that is because it isn’t reliant on advertising revenue. When you ask for money in return for valuable content, as I’ve learnt with this newsletter and with Podnews, you get it. While that will, clearly, still be informed by the state of the economy - people can’t give money they don’t have - it’s more resilient than ad revenue. And much less intrusive.
This method of earning money - some call it Value for Value, another of Adam Curry’s core beliefs - is fascinating since it doesn’t really rely on listener numbers or the vast measurement industry set up to capture them. It doesn’t mean cow-towing to advertisers, or taking dirty money from bad actors. It’s a remarkably pure way of working: provide something of value, and ask your audience for value back.
As another example, we learnt at The Podcast Show in London a few weeks ago that The Rest is History has 45,000 paid subscribers on Apple Podcasts alone: and that 57% of them are on the annual plan. That’s 45,000 people paying at least £60 (US $80) a year - an annual income of £2.7mn. Those listeners are fans of the podcast, and while they get some benefits (an ad-free version of the show, for one) they also get the satisfaction of knowing they’re giving some value back to the show.