The first time watching Top Gear can often be a lift altering experience for the auto aficionado. It’s a bit like being an accordionist and discovering The Main Squeeze Orchestra.
"There’s an audience for this?"
"Wait wait wait, the BBC actually spends money to produce a show about cars?"
"It’s an hour-long show. About cars. And it doesn’t suck out loud?"
These are common reactions, and generally how many of us reacted the first time we happened to catch an episode on BBC2 while living and studying in England. Unfortunately for American audiences, the only way to experience the hooning lunacy of Clarkson, Hammond, and May was through the Internet’s seedy filesharing underbelly or during a brief, highly edited and reconfigured stint on the Discovery Channel.
Now cable subscribers lucky enough to have BBC America will be able to watch hour-long episodes, mildly edited for time, beginning with the two-year old eighth series, at 8 p.m. EST on Mondays. The first episode aired earlier this week, and while the Nielsens aren’t yet in, the auto-enthusiast message boards seemed to enthusiastically endorse this move by BBC America.
With a new series arriving from across the pond in October, it will be interesting to see if older episodes (but new to most of us) of Top Gear can captivate an American audience the same way it has the rest of the television-watching world – an estimated audience of more than 350 million. The fact there is not an American equivalent currently in production begs the simple question – why not? We Americans are certainly as obsessed with cars as our petrol-headed cousins, but can’t seem to generate interest in programs that don’t center around racing (Pinks), or modification and restoration (TLC’s Overhaulin’ and Discovery Channel’s American Hot Rod). None of those reality-television programs contain the same style of factual presentation in the form of reviews or comparisons, wit and comedy (the indestructible Toyota Hilux springs to mind) or general car culture fetishism as BBC’s Top Gear, or even Channel 5′s arguably lesser Fifth Gear.
Is the lack of an audience for that type of program an aspect of the difference between British and American consumer culture, or simply the way we view our cars? Are we possibly more interested in hard numbers and bench-racing drag modified Mustangs than a 10-minute deliberation on the less statistically tangible qualities of the new Jaguar XK? Or possibly it’s simply a fundamental difference in the role cars play in our cultures. Cars are definitely a substantial component of modern American modern pop culture, but tend to represent more how we as owners want to be perceived and less about how we want to feel when we’re behind the wheel. While the vanguard of car culture in mass media in the UK is Top Gear, in the US it seems to be Pimp My Ride.
Surely the lack of an equivalent is more to do with how the BBC is funded, compared to how US television networks are funded.
The BBC is funded via the UK Government’s Television Licence scheme – every home with a television pays for it. The US networks are funded by advertising.
In the USA, the networks would not let the presenters be so negative about a product, in case the manufacturer withdrew advertising from that network. Without truthful criticism, consumer programmes cannot work.
Ed, you know that the Escalade does nothing well. Its the ultimate example of form over function.
At least the Prius has gotten something other than v12′s and 22′ dubs somewhat cool!
“Cars are definitely a substantial component of modern American modern pop culture, but tend to represent more how we as owners want to be perceived and less about how we want to feel when we’re behind the wheel.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself! How else would you explain the success of the flashy but otherwise boring-to-drive Escalade, or the self-righteously quirky and underpowered Prius?
5th gear > top Gear