Have to disagree with you mate. In the UK, Top Gear is a favourite with both genders and all ages. My 9 year old daughter is a massive fan but the only car she’s interested in is Barbie & Ken’s 1/12th scale Ferrari. The appeal of Top Gear is in the mix of presenters, the anarchic stunts and the belief that every car, every celeb and any politician is not above lampooning and criticism. As soon as you introduce ‘political correctness’, or become dictated by manufacturer & commercial interests then you tear out the very soul of the show. Other car shows just seem to consist of a couple of overly perfect presenters reading from a script of 0-60 times and manufacturer’s blag. Top Gear tells it as it is and you can sometimes imagine the show’s producer grimacing and yelling in Clarkson’s earpiece ‘cos the guy is a total maverick. It’ll be back!

And this differs from parochial little towns in the UK how?

Is this a car-related board, or is it just a pretext for venting petty hatreds?

hwyhobo: …wants to slam US…so dim…insulting…xenophobia

American media executives have a long history of demanding the reworking of non-American-accented English language programming to make them ‘accessible’ to US audiences.

If you peruse the credits of many documentary-type shows on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and such, you’ll see that they were originally produced by the BBC, ITV, sometimes Australian or New Zealand production crews, but were repackaged with an American voiceover for US cable.

When ‘Mad Max’ was first released in the US, the minor Aussie characters were overdubbed with American voices. Occasionally you’ll see on US TV an interview with a heavily-accented English speaker (Scottish, Irish or cockney for example) featuring subtitles.

Perhaps not British accents alone, but the British humor and cultural references of shows like UK Top Gear are perceived, by the people who run American TV channels, as too foreign for the parochial expectations of an American mass audience. Not everyplace in the US is as cosmopolitan as the Bay Area.

Wait – is Robert “Free Market” Farago a member of his local PBS affiliate? That’s awesome!

Nope. As you may know, PBS receives federal funding. As in my tax dollars.

FYI I watch ALL the news nets; Fox infuriates me just as much as MSNBC. But I can NOT stand what passes for automotive journalism on the box. I know EXACTLY why Elvis shot Robert Goulet– well, a TV image of the singer, anyway.

It amazes me when someone wants to slam US and says something so dim that instead of insulting the intended nationality (which unfortunately seems to be a tolerated pastime here) they immediately discredit by their own ignorance anything else they possibly could say in the future even if they accidently happened to be right (as unlikely as it may be in this case).

You do understand that no other country has more immigrant groups, languages and accents than US, right? I guess not. I would invite you to visit my city (SF Bay Area), but with your xenophobia the diversity here could scare you to death.

Apparently a British accent would be too much for delicate Americans to understand anyway.

Second thought: Hmm… a blessing in disguise?

Final thought: Do we really want another 60 minutes of manufacturer-friendly consumer-targeted product showcase? Just like adding water to whiskey, diluting a worldwide success (TG) would simply ruin a perfectly good product. Network television is not a medium that rewards (journalistic) excellence, but rather serves run-of-the-mill inoffensive programming to the masses. If I wanted that I’d be watching Driving Television or MotorWeak (intentional spelling error), not leaving my computer on overnight to download a show from the UK.

Get it all on film. America loves a trainwreck.

As Clarkson pointed out in his Callaway Corvette review, his show is watched the world over, except in the US where we have to “remake” everything to somehow suite our “tastes”.

There is absolutely no need or reason to “remake” this show for the United States, Clarkson, Hammond and May should be aired untouched and unedited in the US just as they are everywhere else.

I hope Top Gear with all it’s wit and veracity makes it big in the US outside of Discovery and BBC America. I like the idea of putting it on HBO or Showtime, it would fit there the best and the audiences of both networks would probably give it the chance it deserves.

As for Motorweek… Good lord it’s just horrible. I would rather watch a TV show where I was forced to watch random people clip their toenails.

If HBO picks it up, I would like to see James Gandolfini as Jeremy Clarkson and Steve Van Zandt as Richard Hammond.

I would like to see James Gandolfini as Jeremy Clarkson and Steve Van Zandt as Richard Hammond.

Davis is clearly easier to please than TTAC, which held a similar car in very poor regard. I can’t remember a critical MotorWeek review. The cars they test are all wonderful!

Just goes to show you that even total independence from ad revenue doesn’t guarantee a show with editorial balls.

I agree with EEGeek: HBO would probably be the best home for ATG, especially if they got the right people from the original involved.

And don’t forget, they are all “reasonably priced”. That line frequently caused me to gag in disbelief.

Not that TG is a lot more informative, just more entertaining.

I recently caught MotorWeek’s Dodge Journey review. John Davis gushed superlatives concluding it is, ” a well-rounded and well-priced entry into the expanding crossover utility segment.”

Davis is clearly easier to please than TTAC, which held a similar car in very poor regard. I can’t remember a critical MotorWeek review. The cars they test are all wonderful!

buy your audience. that’s what the prime time ‘game shows’ do. they let their audience live vicariously through the show’s participants… – thus, they tune into the mindless drivvel in large numbers…

top gear could do the same thing:
audience voting, car give aways, etc…

three lucky winners a week. one on site audience member, two tv audience members… – obviously you’d need to have some sort of ‘text’ in to qualify, etc…
give away 3 cars each week… – either from what was tested that week, or let each winner choose (or something like that)… – cap the msrp at 50k, PLUS give enough cash to allow for taxes to be paid and vehicle operation for 3 years… – or something similar that would work…