Does Anyone Recognize THIS Hero?

"People who take offense to IC actions OOCly need to learn to differentiate between the two... Or change their damn meds."

Well, you do a couple of IKEA commercials and the next thing you know, you get a children's show, a line of bacon-flavored breath mints,
And videos like these.
*shrug*

This explains why American television is so much better than British TV... OH WAIT! That other thing...

Drat! The curse of Dr. Who and Top Gear!

***

on a more serious note, I understand why television licenses work to encourage shows that can be neutral. I understand why commercial television networks in the US couldn't ever dream of operating something like Top Gear. It would go against every single ad-supported policy on the books. I dislike how political bias has turned the major US television networks from something to watch during the evening into something where national pride is discouraged, and every single sitcom is about pushing some kind of political or social envelope. The idea of a Jeremy Clarkson type standing up and saying I'm American and Proud Of It on the US's networks is just... unthinkable. Network execs would have a heart attack and turn the satellite off than let something like that get off.

What I don't like about the Television License is the over-reaching implication of another tax, which is what I view a television license as.

Sometimes though, when I see what the BBC can do, and allows it's shows to do, I wonder if a product-based tax is worth it to form an organization that wants to get everyone... not just a targeted market.

BBCAmerica is a season behind, and only on premium cable networks. They also tend to cut content from the BBC2 original. Same goes for the BBC Prime and other syndicated versions. The older version that was made for the Speed Channel was also a cut-content version.

And no, you sort of missed the point. Top Gear does work in the US market. The shows producers are aware of the near fanatical bit-torrent following, as aware of the producers cracking jokes with some of the fans while filming the pilot that NBC declined to pick up or show after dropping several million dollars on the production costs.

The problem with Top Gear on the broadcast and cable networks is that the broadcast and cable networks are used to ad supported revenue. Top Gear UK, and Top Gear Australia on SBS, could get away with saying that a car was awful, not that good, and so on. In a sponsorship or commercial enviroment, like Top Gear Australia will be getting when it relaunches on Australia Channel 9 next year, tends to discourage presenters from being honest about their reviews.

To put this in perspective, an average Car review on Top Gear lasts around 5 to 8 minutes of review, then a quick lap around the power track, so an average car gets 7 to 10 minutes in the spotlight. During the 2010 superbowl, Ad rates are expected to be almost $3,000,000 for just 30 seconds of ad time. A 30 second ad for a Prime-Time show on NBC runs around $55,000 to $75,000. A 5 minute promotional ad then, for Prime-Time television, would be around $550,000 (x * 2 = n : n*5 = 5 minutes). A 5 minute promotional ad during a major sporting event would be a money sink.

US Advertisers would approach each car review as an ad. The huge concern with Top Gear Australia on Channel 9 is that the show will have to pander to the advertisers. If Ford doesn't like a review and they decide they don't want any more cars shown, that's it. No more Ford cars. And trust me, Commerical networks will fold in a heartbeat if they even THINK that ad revenue is at stake.

In order for Top Gear to work for any of the major US broadcast networks or Cable networks, they'd have to be willing to get the advertisers to ignore what the show says. That's not what advertisers are paid to do. All it's going to take is Tanner Faust saying one word about the new Camero's lack of quality, and poof, the UAW is going to be screaming for a lawsuit for damages against their reputation.

***

Once you get beyond the dependence of the US television broadcast industry on keeping advertisers and vendors happy, at all costs, there's the other significant political problem, which I danced around. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are British and proud of it. They knock on other countries all the time. If an American host stood up and made one crack, just one snarky comment, about liberal democrats in the UK, or the French being Work Shy, Lamb Burning Peasants, the ACLU, PAW, and several other... idiotic minded organizations would be burning down the front doors of the studio.

NBC, ABC, CBS, and even Fox to some extent, keep pushing the moral and social boundaries of what's acceptable. Will and Grace, Friends, 90210, Simpson's, Family Guy, Futurama. Shows that glorify or promote various social lifestyles or political agenda's and deliberately insult and demean others. Some of the studios have admitted that they have filming policies that right wing politicians, conservatives, and Christians, cannot ever be shown in a good light on their networks. When one of those studios is called CNN, you can start to see the problem at hand.

Top Gear works, and draws a US audience partly because the Top Gear guys often say on camera what the US networks would never allow to be said. Picking apart the arguments for more speed camera's? The problems with the nanny-state? Nope. Such wouldn't ever fly against current corporate broadcasters in the US.

That's really why NBC killed Top Gear America. It's not that the show wouldn't work. It's that the show represents what is, essentially, incomprehensible Anathema to the executives who largely run the media broadcasting.

Yuuki Sato (as your friend Arata KaGAmi) disapproves of your actions.

Agreed. It is an over-reaching tax and there is no way to have a TV and only watch the commercial channels with the BBC blocked.

However when you compare BBC News to Fox New, or BBC Costume Dramas like Pride & Prejudice VS the average America "Made for TV Movie" and its really not hard to see where that money is going, and that it is money well spent.

I just don't watch or read the news in America, Its all fear mongering and propaganda, or Rupert Murdoch pushing his agenda down your throat.

When a Comedy Parody Show like the Daily Show or Cobert Report does a better job of fair and uncensored reporting then it is a truly sad state of affairs.

Its sad to say but a TV license simply wouldn't work in America now, the Commercial Media is too powerful, rampantly out of control and Government Subsidized Programming would be a disaster, just another fund to pull from and give to yet another multi billion dollar business that made some bad business decisions... the chance that any of that money would ever see the light of day in the form of high quality, unbiased Television are about as unlikely as the US ever seeing complete health-care reform.

Oh they KNOW what they did and if they don't, I'm SO not going to tell them!

*swoons*
MUST HAVE NAO!!!1!!!!eleventeen!!

*swoons again*