F***!

Just in case you'd forgotten how much Channel 9 loves it's viewers:

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2009/10/seinfeld-reunion-part-2.html - "Having aired Episode 3 of Series 7, now it is skipping straight to Episode 6 a week later."

So along with s***house censorship, we continually get crap like this. And the FTA stations wonder why people download shows...

Yeah I lolled hard at that on ch9 ''THE SEINFELD REUNION!!!!@!@!!!! (curb your enthusiasm)''.

Just download em.

Oh noes, that sucks.

It just won't be the same on commercial TV (yes I know sbs has ads)

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2009/10/warne-clarkson-utter-nonsense.html

One report yesterday not online reiterated the rumour that Shane Warne could front a series on Nine, but that he would be joined by Jeremy Clarkson.

�Utter nonsense,� says a spokesperson for BBC Worldwide.

�Beyond that there is really nothing to add,� she said.

So yeah, no. No Clarkson hosting the AU version.

The very important point that many are missing, is that with a higher rating commercial network running/airing the show, advertising sponsors will have a good deal of dictatorship in what the public actually sees.

NBC in the US had the rights for Top Gear USA, and even had a fair bit of time spent in preproduction. At the 11th hour, NBC canned the series, simply because of the fear of retribution from the car manufacturers (that form a large part of prime time advertising). Toning down the show's content to appease advertisers, was viewed as being against the spirit of the show (from reputation, of its UK counterpart).

While the UK tend to mainly rubbish and destroy European designed and manufactured cars, the Australian version won't be the same..

In better news, the new series of the UK version starts up on the BBC in about three weeks. In HD now for the first time (outside of the Polar special).

has any TV show been better after it's been poached by another FTA station? And whats the bet that the new Australian Top Gear will be more like fifth gear, an hour long infomercial praising the car manufacturers, instead of a witty entertaining show about them driving cars around their track screaming POWER!!

I met the guys from Top Gear a week or so ago. They were filming on the 'death road' in Bolivia while I was riding down it on a Mountain Bike.

Keep an eye out for it! Looked like they were having an epic time.

jayebee, how much fun is mountain biking death road?!

which company did you do it with? i did it at the start of the year with downhill madness, was rad fun.

Hopefully the new series is better than the last. I have t o say the last series was the most boring ever. The episode where they delivered the letter I have to say was the first episode I turned off half way through.

You can thank the budget cut (GFC, etc) for that. Thankfully, this season will include the "italian job" mini car race in the subway.

I didn't mind the Australian version. It had a go, and tried to be original (instead of a poor carbon copy of the UK series, which no one will ever touch).

And they weren't too proud to not admit that stuff from the first series was poorly received, enough for them to explicitly reference/remove/repair it in the 2nd.