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Top Gear – Series 13 (now with budget cuts)

Top Gear - Series 13

Internet speculation suggests the next series of Top Gear will return in March June 2009. What is not speculative, though, is news that Series 13 will be produced for less coin due to BBC budget cuts.

Speaking on his blog, Executive Producer Andy Wilman said, “next year we’re getting a budget cut. No point in moaning about that—all shows are suffering and nobody’s got a pot to piss in anymore anyway, so no reason why we shouldn’t suffer as well.”

“Our problem though is that there is no fat to trim off the show, in that we waste almost nothing behind the scenes and the old cliché of every penny goes on screen is actually true.

“So in 2009 the budget cut has to affect what you watch,” explains Wilman.

The cuts are estimated to be around thirty per cent, which would bring the costs down to around £140,000 per episode, based on current estimates. Perhaps they could start with trimming some fat off Jeremy Clarkson’s salary, believed to be in excess of £4M per year.

[Source: TopGear.com, Telegraph.co.uk and CarAdvice]

UPDATE 17 April: Top Gear, Series 13, will return on 21 June. [Source: finalgear.com]

60 replies on “Top Gear – Series 13 (now with budget cuts)”

£200,000 per episode? That’s £3.2m per year (based on 16 episodes), so how can Jeremy’s salary be £4m? Something doesn’t quite add up.

They could do a lot worse than offering the episodes on iTunes 24 hours after broadcast (in HD, to dissuade BT downloads). At £1 each surely they could make a huge profit?

Of course, SBS has the broadcast rights in Aus but as they are screened much later, and for free, it could work similarly to the multi-tiered movie revenue model.

Clarkson may (or may not!) earn 4 million squids each year but he does a lot more than just host TG episodes… Likewise for Clarkson and Hammond, who all write columns and host other TV shows as well.

…then there’s the merchandising revenue haha

I still think they will come up with something crazy even though they don’t have the same budget as before. They can make everything out of nothing. Top Gear 4ever!

If YC really made 4M pounds a year he probably would have bought himself a Bugatti Veyron since he loves it so much.

To raise funds why dont they broadcast in other countries? Seriously I download all the episodes by bit torrent, as they do not air any of the newer stuff in Canada. Or why don’t they sell it for like a pound on iTunes. They could generate cash by airing the recent shows on American and Canadian television.

Seriously it can’t be that hard to sell it on iTunes or on the Canadian Networks.

I for one do not want some Top Gear USA. I dont care for the people they have selected to host the show and I cant see it being anything as good as the British show.

id just like to point out that all the top gear episodes are available instantly after broadcast on the bbc iplayer website for free, so itunes wouldnt work.

Lewis, that sounds good in theory, but BBC’s iPlayer doesn’t work outside of the UK.

Your point still has merit, though, but only for UK readers.

Matt, Series 12, which is currently being shown in Australia on SBS has two more episodes to go I think.

However, the last episode of Series 12 on UK screens (the Vietnam special) aired in late December last year. If you want to read some spoilers of what happens, then click on the Top Gear category tag at the top of this article.

James May is best! 😛

Why are they cutting budgets on one of the BBCs highest rated shows? That just seems like a ridiculous idea.

the bbc should spend less money on crap like strickly come dancing and lark rise to candleford and use the money on top gear which i much better

whoever Matt is that posted on the 1st of jan, if it’s 3.2 million pounds a yr to make and jeremy gets paid 4 million, thats a cost for the show of 7.2. it doesnt have to add up haha

and james may is awesome, just watched season 1 again and hes so much better than jason. god jason is boring, i dont care about buying a 20 yr old astra for 400 pounds!

Forget who is making what.
Every new episode of Top Gear is watched by half a billion people world wide.
Lucky ones on BBC 2 but majority illegally on the net.
If you give me an option to watch it for a $1 an episode from BBC website.
I would pay it, let assume one tenth of a half a billion viewers are as stupid as I am.
This could be their cash cow, they could pay for their other crappie ass shows.
I think their is a lot of envy in BBC, and now they have a perfect excuse.

P.S. bbc iplayer only available in UK.

It doesn’t matter how much they have im sure they will make top gear series 13 great because they can make something out of nothing. GO TOP GEAR!

top gear is also offered on youtube. if you search “watch free top gear season 12” on google it should also give you alot of links where you can watch them. thats how i do it. also i think itunes does offer them here in america, BBC can never cut cost of a show this great. i wait for sundays just because of top gear. And MAY is funny with his “amazing point of veiw”

Clarkson gets so much as he owns the rights to the show (hence why he gets more than the others)and other media activity he is in volved in

the itunes idea for overseas viewers is a good point could be good,

as others have said it will still be great as it was in season 1 when they probably had half the budget

I,m really sad that they have to cut the budget ,TG is good because the guys are great , and because they blow up and destroy a lot of expensive stuff

Right well im in Aus and i know id buy every episode released if it was available. As its been said yes alot of people would get it illegaly but seriously, if less even 5% of viewrs bought it they would still be making quite a substancial income stream. As for the budget cuts, some of the most classic top gear was the buy a crappy car for some minor amount of money and have fun, laughs abroad. Its times like this where other shows will show how the budget is the main reason for any sort of quality, Luckily us top gear fans have 3 men and some form of humanoid creature that when faced with any adversity simpily say “how hard can it be?”

Has nobody noticed the massive mistake in this picture? the acronym SIARPC – is that supposed to be Celebrity in a reasonably priced car? Because last time I checked, celebrity doesn’t start with an ‘S’ ?!

ignore that, just remembered it’s ‘star in a reasonably priced car’. What can i say, it’s been a long day…

Clarkson has a deal in his contract for profit sharing which is part of the reason his salary is so high. I believe that they did actually cut his salary.

Im in Canada so the only way I get to watch Top Gear is by downloading it. They do occasionally show older episodes here but due to the legal requirement to have 17 minutes of commercials they edit the hell out of the episodes. they also do a piss poor job of it and screw the continuity of the episode. So if the BBC offered the shows for a buck a piece i’d happily pay for them as its a great show that deserves support.

Do they have any idea how much money they would rake in if they made a DVD box set that could be bought in the U.S…or if they even made the shows available on iTunes in the U.S. I have to download them for free 24 hrs after they come out from that Final Gear website. Free is fine but I would be MORE THAN HAPPY to pay to see that show…make it a PayPerView Special or something for like 5-10 bucks an episode to get more money and I’m IN!

i want to know what costs so much, it looks like such a low budget show, they buy cars for a few hundred pounds and then try to sell them lossing nothing, and i’m guessing that all the other cars they test they get from dealers for free.

att: simbob

I bet it isn’t cheap insuring cars like Murcielagos, Veyrons and 599’s, even though its just for a week a car.. A price cut will probably imply less expensive cars on the track and less travel-shows. Sadly, cause I really like the travel shows.. Oh, and the expensive cars on the track.
And I would, like many others, like to pay a reasonable amount per show, if it was legally available on the internet..

PS: James May is cool and thats a fact ;o)

Stuff iTunes. thats the biggest load of crap ever made. Good ‘ol torrents for the win. Top Gear rocks, and Im sure Clarkson wouldnt be that badly off with a salary cut for Top Gear, seeing as though he still gets paid for the other BBC stuff he does. Hammond too.

hi guys, let me first of all calm you all down. reading my daily paper ( the sun ) on saturday, jeremy clarkson wrote in his column that he had heard and seen rumours on the interweb, saying that top gears budget had been cut, his comments were that he was surprised to hear that, especially as when he heard it he was test driving the new mercedes black. so i think that we will be seeing the usual high quality programmes sometime in june hooray

Even though i live in the UK and can watch Top Gear on TV and iPlayer i would still pay every time i watched it if there was the option and buy the box set just because i want to suport the show!!!

Top Gear is the best thing on TV!!!!

i live in england and when i went to australia i saw on tv season 8 bieng classed as new when season 12 had finished in the uk.
unlucky australian viewers.

topgear 4 ever!

@Chip

SBS is now up to date with Top Gear UK eps, so everything new is, well, new again!

Having said that, I think Series 13 will be shown a few weeks/months after the fact.

Nah Liam its actually good. What would you rather watch? Some documentary about discrimation or the holocaust or Top Gear? I’d choose the latter. We now have Top Gear Australia and frankly… its no where near as good, I’m going to one of their filmings later tonight and some decisions theyve made with regards to their hosts is frankly stupid.
They should cut some of the budget for Antiques Roadshow… who watches that? Just get one person evaluating the price of every antique… money saved, hence more money for Top Gear.
Shoddy musicians as James May says, “Puff Diddly” , stuff like duffy and those gangster rappers… the hell? They suck… the real talent is in Top Gear and 4million pounds for Clarkson isnt really enough for something more people enjoy through the different generations than some of the rubbish we hear today… I would gladly pay to see more of the boys and their shenanigans

I would pay to download Top Gear rather than torrent, more than happy to contribute to ensure the longevity of the show!

£4 million before taxes I’m sure, you poor Brits have to give up so much for taxes 🙁

Regardless, I think the budget cuts won’t seriously affect the show… They just won’t be going off to Japan or Vietnam in the next series, maybe more £1000 used car challenges or things like that. It’ll force them to be innovative. Can’t wait!

IMHO, all three hosts are worth £4 million. They certainly provide more hours of entertainment in a year than £12 million worth of Hollywood actors ever could.

Sadly BBC Canada doesn’t show the current episodes at the same time as the UK. Series 12 only started showing a couple of months ago. The last year has essentially been re-runs of Series 8-11 (which is nice if you missed any, since they show about 4 episodes per week).

The other issue is that they’re so badly edited down. There’s a good 20 minutes cut out of each episode for commercials.

Combine all of that and that is why I have to download them. I’m not waiting six months to watch a half-assed rendering of the episode.

I don;t think the budget cuts matter too much anyway. Producers often make the guys by cheap rustbukets out of their own cash.

The BBC SPENDS £200,000 for every episode that comes to around 3.2 million quid a year. But how much BBC earns for every episode from sponsors for TG has not been revealed. I’m sure they earn tonnes of money with which they probably pay Jeremy Clarkson a whopping 4 million quid a year.

Hi guys,

To be honest, i believe that all 3 presenters work hard for their earnings. They do work long hours filming, all 3 of them do other shows throughout the BBC, they all do books too.

These so called ‘budget cuts’ probably won’t affect the show. Firstly, they sold season 12 on iTunes, which turned out to be a great success. Secondly, they probably make a fortune off advertising when they show it on Dave (Dave is owned by BBC and Virgin).

If they have any major problems with money, charge for the people to come into the studio to watch the filming.. Instead of giving 500+ Tickets for free, charge £5 a ticket, at least thats an extra £2500 coming in at least.

P.S. New series starts this sunday (21st June 2009) BBC2 :D:D:D:D

London-Edinburgh Race 😀

Maybe if BBC America would show these normally the US wouldn’t be forced to steal the episodes from piratebay.

They should strike a deal with someone like Amazon.com to distribute the show at $1 to $10 usd per show in the U.S. and Canada.

To clarify what Zur said…Why can’t BBC America air the shows the same week as in the UK? It’s July 16th and we’re still waiing for season 13 to start over here.

Clarkson is da man

I’m from Germany and I love to watch the show … maybe, because no one has made a german translation, so they couldn’t fuck it up, but anyway I have absolutely no possibility to watch this show legally, because the BBC has this stupid restriction due to that you can watch it only from GB – whats the reason for this!? I mean, they don’t have to translate it, they just have to give me the content that they have already shown on free(!) TV.

I simply don’t get it.

I must say, Season 13 is embarrassing/cringy/awful. If there hasn’t been cut-backs then why is it this bad?

(Matt, January 1 2009) “Of course, SBS has the broadcast rights in Aus but as they are screened much later, and for free…” and sorry to tell you this mate, but the folks over at SBS (now one of my least liked networks) actually cut huge slabs out of the original BBC versions to make room for ad breaks!

I found this out when I managed to get my hands on some original BBC versions and I noticed I hadn’t seen large parts of the episodes, even though I had recorded and viewed the very same episodes shown on SBS. There not afraid of cutting out large parts such as the hilarious “and now The News” segments. They even have the bare faced cheek to cut parts out of the road tests or not show some road tests at all!

Take my advice, if you want full, unadulterated versions of TopGear UK, you’ll have to use Torrents. Trust me, it’s worth it! You have no idea on what you miss out on if you watch TopGear on SBS.

seriously all the bbc have to do is put a yearly subscribtion on there bcciplayer for ppl out side of the uk, and bingo, sundenly they get a shit load more money for basically doing NOTHING. i really dont understand the idiocy that is running the bcc at the mo, keeping bbc3 and 4 alive when they have so little viewing im sure its just ppl that accidnely left the tv on and the dogs changed channel.

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