Tim Blair, Top Gear, restless troops, and put the boofheads behind a paywall

(Above: Top Gear driving into a flap).

The news that Top Gear is shifting channels - from SBS to the Nine network - is as sweet as it gets, especially with the prospect of the commercial network attempting to put together its own local version.

Talk about fear and loathing amongst the petrol heads. You see there's nothing the Blairites love more than watching that pompous churlish English git Jeremy Clarkson shoving some utterly incorrect rave up the backside of the politically correct.

Once the Blairites could watch this British taxpayer funded exercise - the British taxpayer entertaining the world through government funding of a socialist kind - on SBS, which constrains itself - since it's also government funded - to three ad breaks in an hour program, and therefore usually manages something over the fifty minutes of content per television hour, compared to the miserly 41-43 minutes doled out on "free to air" as they cram promos and commercials into the rest of the hour.

Deep down, you see, the politically incorrect don't mind having their petrol head cake and eating it too. You know, rail about public broadcasters, berate the ABC and the BBC, and then sit down and watch the gits paid for by public money pretending that they're wild, free on the road anarchists who've headed out on the highway, looking for adventure.

Poor hapless Blairite iolanthe was almost in tears, such was the despair:

I couldn’t care less about the local version as I’d sooner scrape my eyeballs out with a spoon than watch it, but am deeply attached to the UK original. It is therefore with no joy that I forecast 9 will do the following:
- attach a pointless local introduction from some idiot like Eddy McGuire
- as DigiDave has suggested, cut content back to maximise advertising, leading to some continuity errors that they are confident their cretionous audience won’t notice
- remove any reviews of cars associated with their advertisers
- run programs out of order
- find that it’s not rating as well as they thought so move it round and round with little or no notice
- start late to confound those of us who record it
- finally, drop the program in frustration and sit on the rights to stop anyone else showing it.

For those who doubt this gloomy prognosis, I refer you to the West Wing which channel 9 bought and immediately found that its aforemnetioned cretinous audience couldn’t remotely understand. This is a black, black day.

Now never mind the spelling, it's the howl of despair to the heavens that counts. A black, black day.

The problem with this move is that BBC Top Gear thrives on its politically incorrect, laddish, chaotic sense of humour, achieved largely through Jeremy Clarkson’s force of will. Channel 9, conversely, is the most timid of all the TV networks, eschewing “risky” in favour of “heartwarming” wherever possible. Unless they find an Aussie Clarkson (which they won’t), a Channel 9 Australian Top Gear will be about as edgy and potent as a John Farnham boxed set.

Oh no, Johnny Farnham, petrol heads being made to sing along with Sadie the cleaning lady.

Of course you can always find a spoilsport in any comments section:

The comedians are scripted to wow the late teenies every show with absurd and dangerous driving [no helmets at 150mph]
If you take it seriously you are development-arrested. The anti-PC is its only saving grace.

Um, actually, driving stupidly, at high speed, with no helmets is actually being anti-PC. That's what petrol heads love. Wave your little pinkie finger at them, and they drive even faster. Make signs that their penis is a tad small, and they install an even bigger more deep throated muffler, on the basis that decibels of muffler noise x size of muffler = penis size (or MN x SM = PS, where 130 x 30 = 3900).

But generally there was a consensus and it was this:

Channel Nine is the kiss of death. It won’t last.

One naughty person decided to introduce a note of hope (you know the pulsating throbbing note of hope, or is it ecstasy, you get from a Ferrari as it pulsates and throbs, and perhaps provides enough vibration for an orgasmic John Safran).

if worst comes to worst copy and save these into your browser

TG uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/

TG Aus
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/topgearaustralia/episodes/page/i/1/show/topgearaustralia

problem with commercial stations ruining good tv solved with the power of the internet!

Naughty lad. Of course to use the BBC site, which is subject to territorial restriction, you need to know how to use a proxy.

Why next Tim Blair and his gang will be telling us all how to use Megaupload and suchlike and pirate forums to obtain their own complete set of shows past to carry with them anywhere and watch them on their personal viewer of choice. And thereby avoid all the re-runs of the old shows on Nine. No, I'm not giving you the links, but you do know how to google, don't you?

Not such a bad option for publicly funded broadcasters broadcasting free content to a public which has already paid for the content, but a shocking choice for minions of Chairman Rupert.

Well we've yet to hear from Tim Blair himself on the subject - high priest of petrol head worship in the antipodes - as his reporting has tended only to note the change (Gear Shift). If anything, he sounded vaguely supportive about the notion of ultra boofhead Shane Warne teaming up with mega boofhead Jeremy Clarkson on Nine before the rumor was denied:

Pity. Those two would’ve been a fascinating combination. (here).

Even then the troops were restless:

Honestly, who could ever trust channel 9 with the holy grail of car shows? First thing they’d do is edit it to make it politically correct, then they’d cut out segments to fit their plethora of advertising, then they’d change the car reviews to suit their sponsors like Toyota. After screwing it that far, they’d then show it at different times and on different days to try to pip channel 7’s craporama festivale in the ratings. Funnily enough, channel 9 would then be scratching their heads as to why the show lost popularity. Imagine the so called stars in a reasonably priced car too; Kerri Anne, Bert, Tracey Lockjaw, Eddie Maguire - all the has-beens who don’t care about cars and want to relegate us all back to driving their sponsors’ cars like the Pious.

Hate Warne, he’s nothing but a horny child in a middle aged mans body with a rug stapled to his bald head. If you read the article, he has the typical mid-life crisis cars too; can we get anymore a stereotype of a tool with too much money? Mercedes 4WD’s X 2? Please. This guy knows as much about cars as the ALP knows about fighting corruption; jack s**t.
Way to murder the last bastion of sanity on the airwaves channel 9, may you all get boned by a large polar bear in the rip off version of the Arctic special that you will no doubt try to copy.

A few pious souls hoped that Tim Blair might make the cut as a presenter, perhaps as a way of flipping the thinking, and proving that Shane Warne would in fact be a really good idea for a dumb jock petrol head icon, while one frantically worried why the Terror would print such a rumor without first checking with the BBC.

Well now it's time for Tim Blair to come clean and make a stand. Will he lead a campaign to keep Top Gear with a public broadcaster SBS?

Or will he demand that Top Gear be snatched away from the BBC, and given to an English commercial broadcaster, so they can develop a more sensible commercial product in cohorts with the fine people at Channel Nine, who even now at this minute might be conspiring for ways to give the world a new regular edition of Hey Hey it's Saturday? Oh it'll be black faces all the way ...

After all, we all remember James Murdoch's MacTaggart speech (here):

There is a land-grab, pure and simple, going on - and in the interests of a free society it should be sternly resisted.

The land grab is spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling.

Being funded by a universal hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered and obliged to try and offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market.

This whole approach is based on a mistaken view of the rationale behind state intervention and it produces bizarre and perverse outcomes. Rather than concentrating on areas where the market is not delivering, the BBC seeks to compete head-on for audiences with commercial providers to try and shore up support - or more accurately dampen opposition - to a compulsory licence fee.

Yep, that's the best solution. Put the boofheads behind a paywall, on Foxtel here, and in the UK on Sky, and let them pay for the pleasure of being boofheads.

I keed, I keed. I love cars, I love to re-live my memories of the Renault 4 (did you know that the devout petrol heads drop wikies all over the place like a bitch dropping puppies? Start here), and I love the way the BBC managed to turn out a product by boofheads for boofhead petrol heads, and the petrol heads lapped it up, right down to the juxtaposing of the fey wan pixie type and the intellectual against the boofhead Jeremy Clarkson (did they use The Goodies or The Young Ones as their template?), while ranting about the evils of public broadcasting ...

Go Beeb, and leave Chairman Rupert and his minions scrabbling, still trying to get into gear, with a cracked head, and spluttering in a flying cloud of dust and pebbles ... with a bit of luck you'll leave them coughing incoherently and with a cracked windshield.

All the same, pity about the decision to go with Nine. Is there no end to broadcaster greed and stupidity?

Still, if it makes politically incorrect petrol heads do what they should do, which is watch commercial television, and support Chairman Rupert, where's the ultimate harm in that?

(Below: a prize boofhead, always willing and happy to be a boofhead, and now can Shane Warne be far behind?)