Still care about Sarah Palin? Have an extra $9.95 a month? Then this is for you!
The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential candidate launched her own subscription-based channel on Sunday. As well as videos of the 50-year old giving subscribers a peek into her life, the site also includes a national debt ticker, a clock that counts down the seconds until Barack Obama leaves office, links to Palin’s books, links to Bristol Palin’s blog, an Image of the Day (such as an “Obamacare Death Panel” cartoon), a Quote of the Day (from notables such as Ronald Reagan: “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much”), and, finally, a Word of the Day selected by Palin’s mother, Sally Heath. From time to time, members will even be able to speak directly to Palin via online chats.
The cost of a subscription is $9.95 a month or $99.95 for a year.
The site is available on the TAPP platform, a Web TV venture headed by Jeff Gaspin, former chairman of NBCUniversal television, and Jon Klein, former president of CNN U.S.
As of right now, the Sarah Palin site contains 77 videos. According to Andrew Romano from Yahoo News, the videos are “amateurish: handheld camera, reverberating audio, iMovie edits.”
“All in all,” Romano wrote, “Palin seems less like a former GOP vice presidential nominee in the middle of making a television show than like a bored, slightly desperate housewife in the middle of making a vlog.”
But Gaspin, TAPP chairman, thinks there is a market for this.
“Audiences are clearly open to paying for premium access to deeper-dive content they love,” he said.
TAPP CEO Klein added, “Well-known personalities enjoy the connection to their supporters and control over the content.”
Palin, who currently stars in Amazing America with Sarah Palin, isn’t the first conservative figure to launch such a site. Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, now a cable-TV network, began as an internet-streaming channel (GBTV).
I been enjoyin' Sarah Palin a heap more since the sound on my TV broke.
@SarahPalinUSA
— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) August 14, 2014