@ExPatCabby

Amazon paid a reported £160 million for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May after the BBC let Clarkson go over a punch about a steak. The BBC had already paid him about £8.4 million for his share of the Top Gear business. It kept the name and lost the audience. In the video below, the BBC asks him the next year what went wrong. He says the show kept getting bigger, "the lack of support was appalling," and that when you send Amazon a film, its people in Los Angeles "ring up and squeak with joy." At the BBC, he says, you never get that, "ever." Clarkson and his producer Andy Wilman set up the company in 2006 to sell Top Gear's merchandise and overseas rights. BBC Worldwide took just over half in 2007 and bought the rest in 2012. The business took in £149 million in a single year, and the show reached an estimated 350 million viewers. The BBC's side is short. In March 2015, after a day of filming in North Yorkshire, he was told the chef had gone home and was offered soup and cold meat. He punched producer Oisin Tymon, who was treated in hospital. His contract ended that month, a 3-year renewal was withdrawn, and Tymon later settled for £100,000 and an apology. The BBC kept the name. Amazon signed the 3 presenters and Wilman in July 2015 for 36 episodes, and The Grand Tour became Prime Video's most-watched premiere to that point. The BBC's relaunch with Chris Evans opened to 6.42 million in May 2016 and fell to about 1.9 million overnight 5 weeks later, a record low. Evans quit the next day. I think the BBC paid for the wrong asset. It bought 100% of the company that sold Top Gear, while the man people tuned in for was on a contract with an end date. If you pay for a business that runs on one person, his contract is worth more than his shares. At the end of the clip he says Amazon paid "way less than all these speculations." So who came out ahead after that steak, the BBC that kept Top Gear or the 3 men who took its audience? I post one story like this every day: a famous name, the money they made, and who ended up with it.