Amazon is getting some heat in the blogosphere for not allowing their new weekly original programming "Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher" to be available for download.
Personally, I like the idea of this program (from a marketing standpoint). And I bet it will convert to sales.
When you're a site like Amazon that has several million visitors stopping by the site every hour, anything that can keep consumers on the site 3-4 minutes longer (and listen to product pitches) is a windfall. And with Maher, they have (in my opinion) the right mix of entertainment/pitchman to make it work.
And I can understand why Amazon doesn't want it to be a podcast. (Yet.) They know from research that the buyer's attention span is pretty short. Every second that goes buy where you don't click the "BUY NOW" button, you're that many times more likely not to buy. If you're not in front of the BUY NOW button at Amazon.com when you're listening, they've lost their "call to action" and sales conversion opportunity.
They want you there - on the site - buying stuff - while you're listening. It's not that much different than those time share places in Florida where you get the free gift certificate for the lobster dinner if you go and listen to the real estate sales spiel. Same thing here - if you want the free entertainment (the lobster or Maher, your pick), you'd better be sitting in front of our Web site at the time.
Jeff does bring up a very good point - the idea that the volume of listeners would increase exponentially if they opened it up for download. My guess is that they want to see if the show can put "seats in the pews" first before allowing you to listen to the sermon from home.
-aB
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