Traditional terrestrial television received another heavy blow today with news that Jeremy Clarkson and his fellow Top Gear presenters have signed a 36 episode, $250m deal with Amazon.com. After working on tight BBC budgets for years, at a staggering R84m per episode it’s little wonder Clarkson says he feels like he’s moved from a biplane into a spaceship. Fired after punching a producer, Clarkson’s anger released a whole new wave of energy. When the faculty from Singularity University visited Johannesburg recently, they earmarked network television as the next big industry to get disrupted. Amazon’s deal shows those who see a different future are happy to pay up for the best talent. Future generations may look back on this deal as the one that changed everything in broadcasting’s battle between talent and capital. – Alec Hogg  Â
By Matthew Garrahan – New York Murad Ahmed and Henry Mance London
Amazon has signed the departing presenters of BBC’s Top Gear show in a blockbuster $250m deal, a fresh sign of how internet groups are encroaching on the terrain of traditional broadcasters.
The world’s largest online retailer said it had signed Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May to present a television series that will be premiered in 2016.
Amazon declined to comment on the price but people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times the deal was worth $250m for 36 episodes over three years.
The show will be available only to subscribers of Amazon Prime, the service that offers perks such as next-day deliveries, online photo-storage and video and music streaming.
The deal was negotiated by Ari Emanuel’s William Morris Endeavor group. It is one of the largest ever agreed by a digital streaming group – Netflix paid $100m for two seasons of House of Cards, for example – and is evidence of the intense competition among rival operators to sign proven talent that can deliver large audiences for new services. The show will be produced by Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s long-time executive producer who left the BBC with the presenters. They quit in March after the BBC sacked Mr Clarkson for physically and verbally abusing a Top Gear producer, Oisin Tymon.
The move to create a new show will pit the trio against the BBC’s relaunched Top Gear show, led by Chris Evans, while boosting Amazon’s video-streaming service in its battle with Netflix.
Mr Clarkson said yesterday: “I feel like I’ve climbed out of a biplane and into a spaceship.”
(c) 2015 The Financial Times Limited
From Agence France-Presse
British television presenter Jeremy Clarkson, dropped from hit BBC motoring show “Top Gear” for punching a producer, will make a new series about cars for Amazon Prime, the streaming service announced Thursday.
Clarkson will reunite with his two “Top Gear” co-stars, James May and Richard Hammond, for the as-yet unnamed show, which is due to begin filming “shortly” and will be broadcast next year, US retail giant Amazon said.
An estimated 350 million viewers around the world tuned in to “Top Gear” each week to watch the three men review cars and try them out in madcap stunts, making it the world’s most popular factual television programme.
Much of the appeal for fans was Clarkson‘s straight-talking, “man of the people” approach, but critics condemned him as a boorish bigot and he was an increasingly controversial figure even before the altercation with a producer in March.
Clarkson reported himself to BBC management after admitting to shouting at and hitting Oisin Tymon, giving him a bleeding lip for which the producer sought hospital treatment.
The BBC subsequently announced it would not renewClarkson‘s contract, while May and Hammond also left the broadcaster.
“I feel like I’ve climbed out of a bi-plane and into a spaceship,” Clarkson said on the announcement that the trio would be filming three seasons of a new show for Amazon.
May added: “We have become part of the new age of smart TV. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and Prime, an Internet streaming service similar to Netflix, offers subscribers access to thousands of films and television shows, including original content.
The BBC announced last month that it would continue with “Top Gear” with BBC radio presenter Chris Evans as the lead presenter. Production is due to start within weeks.
© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse
By Amy Thomson of Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) – Jeremy Clarkson, the TV presenter who was ousted as host of “Top Gear” this year, will front a new show on Amazon.com Inc. in 2016, underscoring the online retailer’s drive to push its streaming service with big-ticket names.
He’ll be joined by his “Top Gear” co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May, Amazon said on its website. The show will be available exclusively to Amazon Prime members.Amazon “now saying I can’t be their chief drone pilot. Apparently they want us to make a car show,”Clarkson said on his Twitter page Thursday.
The team, which also includes former Top Gear producer Andy Wilman, have committed to three seasons of the show. Amazon didn’t release a name or any additional details about the program.Clarkson left the British Broadcasting Corp. in March after he attacked a producer in what the network called a “physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature.”
It proved to be the last straw after the 55-year-old presenter courted controversy in recent years. Less than a year earlier, Clarkson had apologized after appearing to use a racial slur in one of the takes of his show.
Still, the “Top Gear” franchise was one of the BBC’s most popular with Clarkson, Hammond and May’s car races across Africa and to the North Pole attracting global audiences of 350 million viewers. The BBC said in June that radio host Chris Evans will be the new face of “Top Gear” and has signed a three-year deal to head the show’s new lineup.
