Just days after his suspension from the the show in March of this year Clarkson indicated that he was already thinking about a new show, and earlier this month Hammond and May made it clear that they would only rejoin “Top Gear” if Clarkson was on board as well.
Their decision was one of the things that led Chris Evans to take up the top job in the first place after he had initially turned it down weeks ago when the BBC approached him, not wanting to drive a wedge between the three former hosts. Clarkson, Hammond and May are still involved in several projects for the BBC, so they haven’t quit the network, and Clarkson himself hosted the popular program “Have I Got News For You” earlier in April.
But what of Clarkson’s promise of a new show?
“I’ll miss the BBC, I really will,” Clarkson wrote in his column in The Sun newspaper. “Because for every silly idiot, there were ten good guys who are mad and wonderful and good at what they do.”
Acording to The Guardian, there are three broadcasters competing to sign up Clarkson, Hammond and May: ITV, Netflix and Amazon. The paper also reports that the companies are vying to sign all three of them as a single unit, though neither Hammond nor May have commented in the press about the new show.
Competing broadcasters Sky and Channel 4 have ruled themselves out in efforts to pick up the trio of hosts, leaving ITV as the most likely contender given its reach. It’s not lost on anyone that “Top Gear” UK’s worldwide audience stands at 350 million viewers, an audience that the Evans-led cast will try to hang on to. With a competing show headed by the three former hosts, it will make BBC’s job much more difficult
Published in: Autoweek