Jonathon Ross Dilutes Top Gear
November 17, 2008 by Ewan
Has the BBC Nowhere Else For Celebrity Love-Ins?
Last nights Top Gear had the strangest guest in the ‘Star In A Reasonably Priced Car’ that has the Top Gear forums buzzing (here’s the debate over on Final Gear), Mark Wahlberg promoting his new film Max Payne. What’s got everyone going? For a start he seemed to have absolutely no idea how much of an honour he was going through. There was no feeling that he cared for the show, and he just wanted to say “I’m in this movie a lot.”
The clue was in the timing – the slot is normally 8 minutes long, but last night’s reached a mammoth 12 minutes, and included a film trailer… both elements likely to suit another show better than Top Gear. Say a chat show. Like Jonathon Ross.
Could it be that without Ross the BBC has no other chat show format show to put it’s celebrity glad handing softball interviews?
Backing this up, last night’s Top Gear failed to have a Supercar review, instead featuring a short clip of Richard Hammond in a Japanese powered wheelchair that was dropped from last season, and a strangely out of place studio item (again very short) on a V8 engine connected to a blender..
Time will tell, but if subtle pressure has been exerted on the production team then it’s going to be a long unbalanced Season 12 of arguably one of the BBC’s flagship shows. As James ‘Captain no-longer-Slow’ May would say… “Oh cock.”
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Yes. Not having JR’s chatshow on screws up a LOT of very important and valuable PR - not just for films, but for the BBC’s own programmes, too. eg my husband has a Horizon coming out on Dec 2nd, I was really, really hoping that he might get onto Ross’s programme the week before which would have bumped the numbers up enormously. Now, that won’t happen. :-/ Stupid BBC.
It’s pretty obvious where I stand on the whole Ross/Brand issue (http://www.giagia.co.uk/2008/10/29/save-jonathan-ross/), but it’s clear that the BBC made a ridiculously rash decision which will only serve to shoot themselves in the foot over the next couple months. The PR angle being the most obvious one.
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Gia,
Thanks for the comment. It’s also interesting that our return of Top of the Pops article has a similar angle, but this time for bands. The only opportunities out there were Jools Holland (street cred but low sales impact) or Ross (massive sales impact). Now it’s just Jools.
There’s a lot to be said for the US ‘Late Show’ ‘Late Late Show’ chat show formats. Surely this is prime ground for BBC3 to start nurturing proper on air talent (as opposed to autocue readers) and start a hierarchy of chat/variety/topical shows and create a group of presenters fit for the 21st century.
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[...] Grand Daughter Georgina Baillie gaining more work, it seems only Ross and the stars looking to pimp their new projects on BBC have lost [...]
I just watched this on BBC iPlayer - the SIARPC segment didn’t reach twelve minutes - it was just over 10!
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[...] It’s not long till Ross’ 13 week suspension is over, and quite frankly the BBC need him back as soon as possible. For all the controversy over Manuel-gate, the hasty replacement of Friday Night with Ross in the TV schedules and his Saturday morning Radio 2 show has illustrated the BBC has very few outlets for light entertainment. [...]