But even if he is riding the coat-tails of Louis CK, isn't it still a good thing that more people are starting to provide direct content for very reasonable prices?
It is, but if Gaffigan squanders the marketing potential of this, then it will have a serious impact on how much money his special brings in.
Since this is only the second time a (well known, mainstream) comedian has tried this, a failure or even just a poorer-than-expected showing could make a lot of other entertainers write Louis CK off as being a one-time thing. They'll assume he succeeded as a novelty and will be more wary of trying it in the future.
We need Gaffigan to succeed to show that the model is repeatable in order to convince others to try it. If he fails, it will be that much harder to convince others that they're not better off just following the status quo.
A common strategy is to pre-announce when you know a competitor is ready to release a product but yours is in the pipeline.
I'm not claiming that this is the case, but if some other comedian is ready to release on Friday (and therefore become the second significant person to do it), Gaffigan's pre-announcement may actually be part of a well planned strategy.
No, because we're talking about two different groups.
Just because the general public doesn't know of the special, and therefore doesn't know of it's failure, other entertainers will. It's their job - the business side of their job - to keep up to date with these sorts of things.
It is a good trend, but when people do it incorrectly, and then fail, the entire industry can just say "Ha, look, that direct-to-consumer model doesn't work."
I want him to succeed. I want to be able to watch a trailer of his video, think it is hilarious, go through a one minute payment process, and have the video to watch instantly right after that in whatever format I want. If that is Gaffigan's plan, why bother pre-announcing it? Why not just wait till he has something to sell?
Since this is only the second time a (well known, mainstream) comedian has tried this, a failure or even just a poorer-than-expected showing could make a lot of other entertainers write Louis CK off as being a one-time thing. They'll assume he succeeded as a novelty and will be more wary of trying it in the future.
We need Gaffigan to succeed to show that the model is repeatable in order to convince others to try it. If he fails, it will be that much harder to convince others that they're not better off just following the status quo.