Credit Crunch Bites Top Gear - Budget Cut for 2009

Too bad that will happen. But I think the TopGear crew could turn stones into gold. They're really capable of amusing the audience with the least budget.

dose this mean that They wont test supercars and have top gear challanges.

That's too bad. Looking at the bright side though, perhaps it's not that bad if they feature more typical car tests/reviews, instead of extravagant stunts and trips?

Oh no, my favorite TV show is gonna get cheaper! =( Hope they won't lay of the Supercars and challenges!

Ha what rubbish , more like clarkson does not want a pay cut of his 2 million a year job , so they had to find the money elsewhere and reduce the budget.

hahahaha best line here --- "an earlier episode in the season featured a trip to America where the show was forced to buy a Dodge Challenger SRT8 because Chrysler declined to give them one." wow!!!

Doesn't bother me. I'm all for more of Clarkson's car reviews! The stories/trips, although funny shouldn't be overdone anyway in my opinion.

=( i love top gear just the way it is... I hav watched it for as long as i can remember (befor james may came so i would of been about 7 or 8 yrs old) and now they are going to hav a budget cut and that will mean less extravagent stunts and challenges wich are my favourite...

this is not as bad as it looks, maybe they will not transform crappy cars into spaceships but they will still make trips and challenges they say next season they are going to go to chile and i dont mind if they test more cars cuz i think top gear is getting a little bit behind in testing cars

I bet Hammond kept the Challenger afterwards :-).

NOOOOOOOO

So the Reasonably Priced Car....... will get an even more reasonable price?

Because of the way the BBC is funded I can't see how the credit crunch would affect their budgets. More likely is that the recent Brand/Ross Fiasco and the subsequent backlash against profligacy at the Corporation has led to changes in order to ensure the show tracks the current political climate, as someone else suggested.

It's a shame, my favourite episodes are the foreign road trips they do, the ?200,000+ cars they review are getting boring too watch these days, would like to see more realisticly affordable performance/luxury motors been driven.

I completely agree with Bristol411s3, the BBC will still receive the extortionate licence fee from just as many people this year. As people have been saying for a while, the unique way the corporation is funded is sadly being affected by the stupid way it appears to be run. Why all these idiotic channels like BBC 4 and 3 that show poor quality programming, scrap that and give the cash to Top Gear or the makers of Natural World, nothing to do with cars but the shark one was awesome. ubercool, no one wants to see stupid family cars and talk about boot space, if they do they watch fifth gear and buy Whatcar which is dull, lifeless and unamusing.

2 million for a whole year sounds very reasonable, even if it is in pounds. On some tv shows actors/actresses make almost a million dollars an episode!

does anyone know when the next episode starts?