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Top Gear drives onto Nine

Updated: Nine has secured the rights to Top Gear and Top Australia with BBC Worldwide Australia, with the hit show to roll onto screens from 2010.

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topgear460The Nine Network has won the rights to Top Gear following a deal with BBC Worldwide Australia.

The deal includes both Top Gear Australia from Freehand and the UK series.

PBL Media already has the rights to the magazine and website topgear.com/au

“We are thrilled to create a unified home for the Top Gear brand in Australia” said Julie Dowding, BBC Worldwide Australia’s Sales Director. “This country is Top Gear’s biggest territory outside the UK. We greatly look forward to developing its potential with a long-standing partner like Nine.”

David Gyngell , Chief Executive of the Nine Network, described the Top Gear agreement as a landmark partnership with BBC Worldwide.

“We are absolutely delighted to be working together with one of the world’s great broadcasting powerhouses on a program of this quality and wide appeal,” he said. “Top Gear is quite simply an outstanding television product, and linking the experience and expertise of BBC Worldwide with the proven capacity of the Nine Network is a great outcome.”

“We are genuinely excited to have Top Gear under the Nine banner and look forward to bringing it to an even wider audience,” he added.

But for SBS the news was bitter.

SBS Managing Director Shaun Brown said: “It is disappointing that a brand SBS has spent many years building is moving to a commercial network.

“SBS was the only Australian network brave enough to take on the irreverent series in 2005 and we have built it into successful event television with a dedicated audience. We are proud of what we have achieved with Top Gear.

“SBS, with its limited resources, lives with the knowledge that while it can discover and develop great programs and events, it cannot always defend them from the aggressive bids of well-heeled competitors.”

SBS will not comment further.

92 Responses

  1. OH god. this is not good. Channel nine can use the uk series as an advantage , just as long they don’t put a single trashy finger on it. But for the australian version, they don’t have a hope in hell, they’ll maybe be less complacent than the person who designed its format on SBS and maybe mix it up a bit. But if you want top gear australia to have ever been a success, you should have done it the way the uk version did. Renew a classic car variety show, have a little audience, have little or no humour and by the fifth season you bring things up a bit, TGA did the exact opposite, you hype it up, create a carbon copy and have the lamest presenters who just get their jokes from watching TGUK repeats. Channel nine was given gold as well as a box of crap.

  2. The only positives I see coming from this move in regards the Australian version are:

    1. The presenters can’t be worse
    2. The production values (e.g. footage, editing etc) have to get better with the swap.

    These are the two main factors which make the BBC verision so awesome and which, I fear, SBS mostly failed to capture.

  3. It will be interesting to see the ratings for TG on 9. There is a generation of older Aussies who still believe 9 is still the one (even though now that is not always the case) who sit thru anything 9 puts up. Just look at the mysterious success of 2.5 men for proof. My dad still believes it because all those years ago Brian told him !

    I do think it is a good move for the Top Gear franchise.

  4. @Edu – No not IMO, infact I would have like to have seen the ABC get it and maybe been able to air the full 60 min show, which is unlikely as they are edited down the 50 minutes for international distribution. I just pray they are not edited further to fit in more ads but I think we’ll see the last of the show at 7:30, unless it’s put on GO!

    All 3 commercial channels are too quick to drop the axe, just look at TEN with 3 Rivers!

  6. A sad day for Top Gear in Australia … I can only hope that maybe Nine might put some effort into actually showing new episodes closer to their original air date than SBS did … the one thing SBS didn’t do properly.

    … wishful thinking I think 🙁 Guess the only positive is if Top Gear Aus continues to suck (which it will), I’m sure Nine will have no problem axing it for good!

  9. @edu
    i probably would have more faith if it were on 7-however it is a SBS show and that is where it should be! TGA will fail (not that that will be a difficult task) and as for the real Top Gear i’m sure it will be an early success however, like with all the successes, 9 will flog it and it will do nothing but hurt the show-remember Ramsey?(how long till Clarkson call Tracy Grimshaw a cow?) even 2.5men is down, you never see it hit 1.7-in fact some eps get below a mil!
    your entitled to you opinion however IMO the list of channels it should be in for most to least is- SBS1/2, ABC1/2, Foxtel (mainly UKTV, BBC or How To or even Lifestyle), online, 10, 7 and the very bottom of the list is 9. as i said before worst possible decision!

  11. @TomK… I wonder if you’ll be singing a different tune if Seven got Top Gear instead…and to sweeten the deal, Seven might do a factuals of the show like ‘the Life and Love of the Stig’, Top Gear Crash Investigation or even Top Gear Emergency!!

  12. It’s a shame SBS has lost TG UK but as for the local version, it just never got it right. The challenge for 9 is to prove they won’t screw up TG UK and they can fix TG Aus !

  13. This may sound crazy, but to prevent this from happening again, SBS (and ABC for that matter) must have a large sum of money to fend off hostile bidding from commercial networks. The Federal Government should set up a fund especially for overseas programs and sporting event acquisitions, on top of its normal funding to SBS and ABC. This fund will have a base amount of $100 million and to be topped up with interest from the Future Fund each financial year. The fund will have a strict criteria and can only be used (on request from SBS or ABC) to outbid commercial networks for a particular program (such as Top Gear) or a sporting event.

  14. @edu 9 didn’t really stick with those show (homeMADE got cut to 1ep a week and even that got pushed back, and APC got cut in half and as david said barely a mention after it finished). they also had to save face with these show they had clearly stated that they were going to stick with them after their early failures in the year. there only so many eps of 20to1 and 2.5men, people were already getting quite vocal about the endless repeats they couldn’t risk it. also most networks stay with failing competition shows-although they get cut back they will usually give the audience a chance to see the winner (Popstars Live on 7 and The Hot House on 10-although we all remember Yasmin’s Getting Married). however TGA isn’t a competition i feel it is facing the same future as something like Battlefronts or THISafternoon.
    @Lex
    couldn’t agree more plenty of 9 haters-simply because 9 give us too many reasons to hate and not enough not to! while all other networks (including foxtel) make stupid decisions they are few and far between compared to 9. but yes you are right lots of 9 haters (myself included)

  15. Don’t blame Nine – have a chat to the show’s producers for whom money was more important than class I guess! Not that I watch the show but enough people follow it on SBS that it’s bound to hit big on Nine – for a while – then when the inevitable decline sets in – what happens then?

  18. disgusting. My stomach actually churned when i read this. So many things come to mind

    > blatant cross promotion of other c9 shows
    > stars in reasonable priced cars are all gonna be C9 identities
    .
    .
    I hate to raise this nightmare scenario – but having shellei craft & scot cam being 2 of the presenters (think of the promo – “a worlds first – a top gear female presenter…..”)

  19. @ Lex
    I dont think its because the fact people are Nine haters, its the fact that they screw with shows and if they screw with this one people will get mad. SBS i think has been given the raw end of the stick and i think it sucks. If it fails on Nine then you know where it will end up or should i say wont end up. Sure there is GO! but why even bother.

    SBS has put the work in to make this their number 1 show and it gets yanked from out under them all because Nine have money.

  21. I don’t watch it.

    But it seems like it had more of a long term future on SBS. What happens if it underperforms and Nine dumps it.

    Whilst with SBS it was always going to be one of their flagship programs.

  22. I can see 9 axing, or moving this show around a lot. Sure it was popular on the Special Broadcasting Service, but that channel only had about 5-6% in market share.

  23. Thats just F******G great!!! I live in Katherine NT and only get SBS and ABC digital
    and will now be made to watch TopGear on 9-Imparja Analog until 2013.

  24. And another thing – at least on SBS the programme was guaranteed to start on time, so there was no fear of DVR’ing 2/3’s of an episode of 2 1/2 Men.

    The Channel Nork hate is justified. In their desperation to regain the dizzying heights of rating success, they’re bandwagoning onto the biggest hit SBS has ever had.

    Had Top Gear started out on Nork instead of SBS in 2005, the show would have been compost long ago as there was never the patience to develop the following.

  25. $20 bucks says that either Scott Cam and/or Andrew Daddo and/or Jules Lund will be on the show and give it the kiss of death like the numerous shows they have managed to do so….

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