Top Gear Australia to Channel 9

Just from following James on Twitter, he is one hell of an overscheduled man. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the one gone simply because they can't book him long enough. He's never on the same continent for more than a week it seems.
 
I like Stve the most.

Yeah me too.

The presenters they keep will all depend on what direction ch9 take. If they're wanting to fill it with in house celebs like Warne and Newman then they'll probably go for James as he is by far the best known. But if they decide to give it some cred they'll need someone that can really drive and has lots of experience reviewing cars like Steve. If they have to use Warne I hope they keep Steve and Warren though. They work really well together and I think they represent the kind of personality that Warne is not -intelligent, humble, measured, witty etc. Thus they fill in his 'blanks'.
 
I dont mean to sound obtuse, but which demographic is that?

Bogans. That's always been Nein's core market.

That's interesting, only one new host. From the way that reads at least they are keeping two of the hosts from SBS. :hmm:

Reading between the lines, I'm expecting it to be James Morrison.

Steve + Wazza + ? could work, depending on ? is. If ? = Warnie and all 3 of them have to play to characters (i.e. Warnie = Clarkson, Wazza = May, Steve = Hammond), then it will fail. Not through any fault of Steve or Wazza, and I would still watch them on any future projects they may be involved in either separately or together. I just hope Nein realise just how much untapped potential they have there if those two are left to their own devices. They probably won't, and the scripts will be so bad we'll be hounding Nein to get TGA's SBS-era script writer back!

One positive I can see from this: it might help us appreciate which ever original TGA 2 are left a whole lot more.
 
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Just from following James on Twitter, he is one hell of an overscheduled man. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the one gone simply because they can't book him long enough. He's never on the same continent for more than a week it seems.
I'd always assumed that him being chosen late was the reason most of TGA S2's challenges were Steve and Warren, but perhaps his scheduling was more the reason, which would add weight to him being gone. Which would be a shame, he fit in very well.

The problem is that all of them currently fill a niche the show needs. Unless they bring in a proper motoring journalist (who from all previous commercial car programs are proven to be the most boring people in the world), no one floated so far from the Nine stable really fills the gap the removal of any of the current presenters would.

Steve is the real driver of the lot. TGUK has the ability to do pretty good shootouts between Clarkson and Hammond around the track. You nearly got to that with Morrison and Pizzati, removing Pizzati would mean you wouldn't have a dedicated car enthusiast on the show, and no obvious choice to replace him in that regard would improve things.

Warren brings such a unique brand of humour and is also a very strong host and interviewer. I'd also be tempted to call him the best reviewer of the lot, but I think scripts were the issue for all presenters there.

Of the floated options, Warne is useless, he sucks on the Cricket coverage, let alone trying to be intelligent on a motoring show. Anyone can cock about on TV, but the thing about Top Gear is that they have other levels of humour as well. Newman is a better option, but he is currently in the courts over road rage and speeding, perhaps not the message Nine will want to send directly.
 
Ch 9 might go with solid established presenters who pull numbers and go with Darryl Somers, Kerrie-Anne Kenelly and use Dermott Brereton as the comedy sidekick.
At least by going to 9 it will have us all watching to see if it will be a worthy revival.
Any word on when the UA show starts again?
 
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Not really.

I like SBS and ABC, but there is a large section of the population out there who simply refuse to watch them. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to people who sounded interested in checking TopGear out until I mentioned which station it was on, at which point I'd get "Oh... I don't watch SBS."

.... yeah, that was me until I discovered Top Gear and Doctor Who. Except i wouldn't go, "Oh, i refuse to watch ABC/SBS even if a promising show is on there", I just didn't really like them. I was a weird child.... Still am weird actually.


There was a sneak peek of Top Gear on 9 last night, with Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" as the promo music. I don't know if it has been on before though. I would comment on it, but my grandma had to go and change the channel to the tennis on us all and whinged about us then changing it back to Survivor after the promo aired of course. GAH.
 
1. So the WIN Top Gear webpage says: "Featuring a brand new Australian host, crazy challenges, new segments and the latest car reviews, Top Gear Australia is stepping up a gear."

2. A while back, some press release said something along the lines of, 'Channel Nine are already working on a series of Top Gear Australia specials for 2010."

But does 1 + 2 = 3 (as in hosts), or will Channel Nine just have Shane Warne hosting "specials" where they bring in a bunch of Channel Nine 'heads' to do the (dis)honours?

A scary idea, but there's nothing anywhere assuring anybody that Nine is sticking with the usual format or any of the hosts from the last series of Top Gear Australia.

Just speculation and food for thought... so nobody needs to neg-rep me for throwing this up for discussion!
 
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Any word on when the UA show starts again?


I'm going to assume you meant "UK" show.


Not until after the Winter Olympics end in March.
 
.... yeah, that was me until I discovered Top Gear and Doctor Who. Except i wouldn't go, "Oh, i refuse to watch ABC/SBS even if a promising show is on there", I just didn't really like them. I was a weird child.... Still am weird actually.


There was a sneak peek of Top Gear on 9 last night, with Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" as the promo music. I don't know if it has been on before though. I would comment on it, but my grandma had to go and change the channel to the tennis on us all and whinged about us then changing it back to Survivor after the promo aired of course. GAH.

haha. I was the opposite, well...still am, sort of.
I flat out refuse to watch free to air commercial tv unless it's to watch the Cricket on Nein or Top Gear on SBS.

Yeah, they ran a lot of clip promo plugs for Top Gear during the Cricket. Most of the content was from S12 and 13, I think. I wasn't really paying attention because Mark Nicholas was doing such a horrible job at hard selling it.
 
But does 1 + 2 = 3 (as in hosts), or will Channel Nine just have Shane Warne hosting "specials" where they bring in a bunch of Channel Nine 'heads' to do the (dis)honours?

A scary idea, but there's nothing anywhere assuring anybody that Nine is sticking with the usual format or any of the hosts from the last series of Top Gear Australia.

You know i wouldn't object to the australian version being a different format to the UK version. Not that i would like shane warne as a host but i don't really see the point of trying to make an exact copy of the original show.

Australian top gear does not have the same budget as the uk show. We don't have the same access to awesome cars, or the ability for the australian hosts to easily travel to other countries. At best copying the UK show will only ever end up as a weak immitation.

The smart thing would be for the australian producers to come up with a new spin on TG. Something a bit different and unique.

I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens. :hmm:
 
More to the point, we can't make a show as good looking as Top Gear UK or provide a diverse range of music like the UK one can.

Mixing the format up a bit by not being a total carbon copy is what TGA started to do in S02, but it never got enough time to work properly.

The best option is to go back to the drawing board and pull out the key elements that make Top Gear what it is (awesome machinery, the chemistry between a few good mates, epic cinematography, broad soundtrack; all interspersed with humour ranging from teeth whitener/hair/height jokes to more sophisticated, topical subjects).

Hopefully 9 can drill down to what Top Gear really is and not simply present a re-hash of the variety show, with the major subject being Cars.
 
...pull out the key elements that make Top Gear what it is...

Reply from Ch9 Directors
awesome machinery: The machinery we'll be given will be awesome, but our budget constraints are such that we may have to rely upon other incentives to tempt manufacturers to lend us their products cars

the chemistry between a few good mates: ????Chemistry??? We don't know what that is but there'll be three great Ch9 Hosts who will do a wonderful job (or be boned)

epic cinematography: Yes we're known for doing those

broad soundtrack: We'll spare no expense

all interspersed with humour ranging from teeth whitener/hair/height jokes to more sophisticated, topical subjects: refer to chemistry answer
 
I reckon the absence of any TGA content in the ?long-lead? promotion of TG on Nine is a huge tell. I don?t think Nine know what the hell to do with the TGA franchise. Or, more importantly, how to make any money from it.

Let?s think about this from a business standpoint.

First of all, if Nine resurrect TGA they would have to produce their own version of TGA pretty much unsubsidised, and then work hard to recoup costs and hopefully make a profit from advertising, off-shore resale and merchandising.

So, the higher production values and costs demanded by the TGA format would raise the break-even value to ridiculous levels. Remembering that both the BBC and SBS productions are/were largely subsidised, so these would have had a a much lower break-even to make the show viable.

Then take the other side of the coin - TG UK on Nine. A much better proposition for them. TG UK comes to Nine at a set ?per-view? cost that would be much lower than making any show themselves. The series is basically repeats of the BBC show with a proven popularity, and without all the uncertainty of producing new content.

In short, Nine would love having TG UK in their line-up, and absolutely hate the idea and expectation of having to produce TGA as part of the deal.

Nine would looking of any way possible to either change the TGA format to lower the production costs, or get out of producing TGA altogether. They don?t need TGA. It?s an expensive and risky albatross around their neck with a huge potential for costing them money if they get it even slightly wrong.

This is why we?re not seeing any TGA in the Nine promos. They have absolutely no idea of how to make a business case for producing it.

Prediction. I reckon Nine will bury TGA in a bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ?Beware of the Leopard?.

Or... wait for this... they?ll do the ?man?s washing-up trick? - whereby they?ll make such a hash of the first episode that everyone will call for it to be canned, thus letting them off the hook by public demand.

Did someone say ?Warnie??

Gulp.
 
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Actually, the production cost of each episode of TGA on SBS was about par with the advertising revenue that it generated (about $100,000 if I remember correctly). Nine would have more ad time for sale and can charge more for it because of the larger audiences, so they could probably increase the show's budget and still break even.

Prediction. I reckon Nine will bury TGA in a bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ?Beware of the Leopard?.

Hitchhiker's Guide?
 
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Actually, the production cost of each episode of TGA on SBS was about par with the advertising revenue that it generated (about $100,000 if I remember correctly). Nine would have more ad time for sale and can charge more for it because of the larger audiences, so they could probably increase the show's budget and still break even.

Hitchhiker's Guide?

Yep, HGTTG.

The production costs are interesting. So how much will each ep of S14 of TG cost to to air on Nine? $70k with no risk whatsoever and all cream.

If I was on the board of Nine it'd take a lot of convincing to get a new series of TGA through to production. The risk would be phenomenal at this stage and Nine don't really do risk, they like proven formats.

The only real hope would be to get an external production partnership happening, like Beyond, Discovery Turbo or PBS.
 
Actually, the production cost of each episode of TGA on SBS was about par with the advertising revenue that it generated (about $100,000 if I remember correctly).

Just out of interest Stiggie, where did you get that production costs figure from?
 
Just out of interest Stiggie, where did you get that production costs figure from?

I remember it was floating around the forums back when TGA aired, but i don't remember where it came from.
 
Anyone know when TGA starts on Nine?

Now with Discovery Turbo playing Top Gear seemingly endlessly, I'm kinda wanting new material, haha...
 
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