Quote from that article:

$354,000

Cost of destroying 20 G-Wiz electric cars in a gigantic game of Battleships. The 20 cars were used as missiles. ‘That’s the Christmas show,’ says Wilman, ‘and we wanted to give the traditional board-game market a boost. So we used cars as torpedoes. It was gratuitously big-budget, I admit.’

And ^this^ is one of the reasons why I'm so in two minds about watching the show; such wanton destruction is just stupidly irresponsible. "Because we can" and "it's funny" don't wash it with me. I've no issues with them destroying old wrecks, but doing the same to new vehicles? F-ing tw$ts...

How much money did Top Gear make for the BBC? Well in excess of that. I am pretty sure I saw it was their top earner by a reasonable margin. 

I expect Amazon to have a much more global audience, and if it's good, make just as much, or more money from it. 

The millions of ways that Amazon can monetize this would be massive. 

jonathan18:

 

Quote from that article:

 

$354,000

 

Cost of destroying 20 G-Wiz electric cars in a gigantic game of Battleships. The 20 cars were used as missiles. ‘That’s the Christmas show,’ says Wilman, ‘and we wanted to give the traditional board-game market a boost. So we used cars as torpedoes. It was gratuitously big-budget, I admit.’

 

And ^this^ is one of the reasons why I'm so in two minds about watching the show; such wanton destruction is just stupidly irresponsible. "Because we can" and "it's funny" don't wash it with me. I've no issues with them destroying old wrecks, but doing the same to new vehicles? F-ing tw$ts...

 

It's not like they were real cars.. I'd argue that destroying those things is doing a service to humanity.

networkn:

 

How much money did Top Gear make for the BBC? Well in excess of that. I am pretty sure I saw it was their top earner by a reasonable margin. 

 

I expect Amazon to have a much more global audience, and if it's good, make just as much, or more money from it. 

 

The millions of ways that Amazon can monetize this would be massive. 

 

 

 

Estimated that Top Gear pulled in about GBP50m per annum across rights and merchandising.   Call that about USD60m/year over about 6-8 episodes.  Roughly USD8-10m earned.  Global audience estimated at 350m people. 

Compare that to Amazon which is paying about USD5.5m/episode for the content.  Amazon total active accounts are estimated at around 300m I think.  Its streaming audience in the US is considerably less than Netflix (which is 45m) and the UK audience is less than 2m households.  

Clearly the rampant price inflation for content (now greater than USD4m/hour) from aggressive bidding will result in tears - probably shareholder tears.  Reminds me of the days when TV output deals were aggressively bid.  And written off in future years.  Of course prices never went back down.....

jonathan18:

 

Quote from that article:

 

$354,000

 

Cost of destroying 20 G-Wiz electric cars in a gigantic game of Battleships. The 20 cars were used as missiles. ‘That’s the Christmas show,’ says Wilman, ‘and we wanted to give the traditional board-game market a boost. So we used cars as torpedoes. It was gratuitously big-budget, I admit.’

 

And ^this^ is one of the reasons why I'm so in two minds about watching the show; such wanton destruction is just stupidly irresponsible. "Because we can" and "it's funny" don't wash it with me. I've no issues with them destroying old wrecks, but doing the same to new vehicles? F-ing tw$ts...

 

What say they turn this money into several times the cost of the cars in terms of profit, and this gets pumped into the economy?  Would your views differ? (genuine question).

Not exactly saying how many watched it are they?  More than The Man in the High Castle.  Set the bar high.

It's not my money, it's probably very funny (have not seen it yet) and that'll do for me.

Not going to get my panties in a wad because someone else spent their money on doing it.