Alfas on Top Gear

[MY105]

I am not a fan of the Australian version of the show, but........., the Brisbane Courier Mail advertised that the Tuesday (22/6/10) night Top Gear advertises that  " tonight's TG in which the boys each have to buy an old Alfa Romeo and put it through its paces".  Could be interesting.   

[Davidm1600]

Hi mate, its an repeat episode I am afraid as pretty much all of the TG programs being shown on Channel 9/Win TV are.  It is good episode if you havnt seen it. It involves a 105 spider, a 75 and a new model GTV.

Ever since SBS lost the show, it has gone down hill IMO, given the level of repeat episodes being shown (more than even SBS used to), and rather than running a whole new season sequentially, Ch 9 mix old and new shows, they also cut so much from the episodes and have too many ads. 

A real shame, and I wish SBS could get it back from Ch 9.

[NigelC]

Agree.  I was a committed fan of the show but Ch9 have ruined it. 

[DavidD]

I agree with you guys, channel 9 has made a complete balls up. I wont even watch it on TV anymore, I just download and watch at my leisure with no ads. It is a pretty good episode though.

[Jekyll and Hyde]

"Thats a weird noise for a car to make.... That's better, what have you done?"
"Gone into second."
"Second's nice, it's underrated as a gear."

[dehne]

i wonder how the new australia season of topgear will go this year, as KENNY is the new host. they said they have had a big revamp and it should be better this year

[Davidm1600]

Is there going to be a new season of Aussie TG, I thought it had died a death !!!  Oh good grief Kenny the garbo, what next.

[dehne]

he cleans toilets, but its shane jacobson and he has been in a few rallies and has also done a bit of track work before so he might be ok, by any means cannot be worse than what is was before

[Barry Edmunds]

Why on earth would anyone ever be surprised that Top Gear would have gone down hill faster than an olympic skier when it switched over to a commercial TV channel. The whole premise of this type of program is compromised by a TV channel's commercial obligations and ALL commercial TV channels owe more to their advertisers than they do to a program's viewers or program content.
SBS did cut and paste episodes too but I don't believe they ever bastardised the program and showed as many old/repeat episodes as Channel 9 has.
In other words Top Gear will never work on a commercial channel.
As for TGA, IMHO it has even less chance of success as long as Steve Legend In His Own Mind is associated with the program in any way.
Why does the program require three hosts anyway and how could you ever hope to find three like Clarkson, Hammond and May. They are so uniqiue in the way they work together.
What the program really needs is at least one of the hosts to have some credibility from a car enthusiasts view and to be able to cross the great divide between car people and non car people the way that JC, SH and JM have done so well

[STRADALE]

just wait for the cricket season you can bet TG will be on and off to suite the cricket fans errrrr ADVERTISERS.
As it is now there are 6 ADDS every 8 MINUTES its F%$#%$%^&*ed

[Barry Edmunds]

Why do people keep referring to the 'poor' standard of the early years of TG to justify TGA's less than watchable efforts so far?
Sure TG was not good back then, at least compared with the slick by comparison show that we see now.
If you are going to produce a new model/version of anything why would you want to go back and try and re-invent the wheel so to speak, as TGA has tried, and failed to do?
TGA started off mediocre and never rose any higher.
If the people involved with TGA were really smart they would have picked up from where TG currently is and what it offers and at least tried to match it or, if at all possible, improve on what JC, SH and JM offer.
From their past efforts it would seem that TGA will continue to offer up more of the same and that must surely be damaging to the TG brand.

[Anthony Sharp]

In fairness to TGA, Glen Ridge is an AROCA member, and has produced at least one car show. His production company costed one 15min segment of UK Top Gear for production cost. It was the beach segment with the  Monaro. There estimate was this cost $250,000 to produce as it involved 3 helicopters, 22 cameras and lots of editing. You can only afford this if your program is being sold to lots of networks world wide and is hughly popular (100s of millons of viwers). TGA has a max of 22 million viwers if 100% watch, therefore will never have the budget to do what happens in the UK, and will struggle to find a team that works as well as TG UK. It is one of those things where the BBC has sold off franchies to other networks to make lots more money, deep down it knows that thay all will most likey fail within a few years, but it also knows as long as TG UK prefroms it wont hurt there bottom line, all the networks that have bought in where just hopeing that there product could ride on the back off TG UK and for a few seasons make a few bucks, and hoped  just maybe thay could make it work long term. Having said that it was always a folly with little long term chance at success. The network knew at worst it would just do enougth to cover costs and hoped they might find the right combination to make a low cost TGA work.

[MY105]

I tuned in to last night's Top Gear (6 July), but I only saw the last half hour. The start time had been advertised (incorrectly) as 8.30pm in the Sunday Mail TV lift out. This part of the show included driving the 3 damaged alfas to the alfa car showing/club meet. I don't know what the first hour of the show included, but I this last 30 minutes made "Celebrity Chef" look really top class A Grade reality TV ! (I'm not into cooking.)
How was the first hour regarding the alfas ?

[Ads]

After seeing the mention of Glenn Ridge, I have always thought he would make a great host on TGA.  He knows his stuff, can drive and is comfortable on camera without resorting to the mock 'matey' ribbing that has gone on in previous TGA productions.  This extends to the TGA magazine- it seems that ACP has monopolised the car mag publication industry in Australia, and Wheels, Motor and Top Gear are all basically amalgams of each other with the same writers (how many have written for all three?) trying to target the same audience. 

Unfortunately, this targeted audience (and I have spoken to several industry people on this) further defines a stereotype that apparently describes the Aussie driving/car enthusiast.  That is that we all have a taste that stops at the latest HSV and that our idea of motoring nirvana is doing burnouts by day and getting pissed by night.  Of course, these things have an appeal of their own, but surely there are many of us who go beyond that; surely there is a space for a local version of something like what evo achieves in the UK.  Run a real comparison- talk about feel, feedback and performance in a more holistic way than 'I dropped it into D (for Drag) and tore the rubber to shreds.  It was BOSS.'

*Sorry about my tangent and rant, back on topic*
TGA (TV), without the production resources of the global brand, should in my opinion aim more directly at car enthusiasts, rather than trying to be a broad entertainer, because it falls short in that capacity due to lack of resources or charismatic hosts.  Think of TGUK when it first introduced Richard Hammond. 

Build on this- there is plenty of passion and history in Australian motoring, utilise it.  Enough of driving around in a quarry seeing who can move the most rocks!