The Grand Tour

iTV Executive Talks About The Grand Tour and Need for Broadcast TV

Are you excited about Clarkson, Hammond and May’s new show The Grand Tour but don’t have Amazon Prime just yet?

Well you may be in luck as there is a chance that this year’s 12-part series may make it onto mainstream television.

British television executive and head of ITV Kevin Lygo is ambitious to see if a deal can be made for secondary rights to the very anticipated show.

He plans to watch it when it is launched. If he likes it, he plans to bid.

Kevin stated at a Bafta event, “We’ll take a view when we’ve seen it…..if it’s for offer, what’s the price? The trail looks extraordinary. Like him or not like him, Jeremy is an incredible broadcaster and a unique presenter and voice. So yeah, I’m sure if it’s all great we would like to have it.”

Lygo believes that Amazon may be interested in striking a deal not only in order to recoup some of the cost of production but also the initial audience is likely to be a fraction of the six million people who used to watch Top Gear.

“The truth is so few people will see it, Amazon will be delighted if a million people watch it and I suspect there’s an audience of five million for a show like that.”

Amazon is persistent on saying the The Grand Tour will be exclusively on Prime only and that there are no plans to sell it to any other UK broadcasters.

What Lygo is saying definitely makes sense because of the type of technology and fundamental change in habits we’re talking about here. The viewers need to either add another $100 per service on top of the device on top of the cable tv fees they pay OR just cut cable all together to view only the shows on Amazon Instant Video (GTN Guid to Watching TGT). The barrier to entry is pretty high for a majority of the 6 million viewers the boys are hoping to get from Top Gear.

The part that Lygo probably doesn’t understand is that Amazon is probably going to make more money through the use of viewer information to target them for products through their marketplace, so they probably don’t need all 6 million viewers, but maybe somewhere in between. The return on investment from this type of monetization is definitely on a different scale from traditional ad-based revenue of broadcast television.

Overall, it seems that Amazon is playing this the right way in using the anticipation to drive up demand, so they can wait for an opportune time for a TV network to make a bid and let the negotiation game play out to optimize their return on the $250 million investment. Whether it be a deal to syndicate the show a week after or a year after, Amazon definitely has the upper hand here.

So for now, those hoping to be able to watch The Grand Tour on broadcast television and have yet to sign up for Amazon Prime, cross your fingers, (but don’t hold your breath), there still may be a chance.

h/t: Mirror

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One Comment

  1. Divide $100 for a year of Amazon prime, then look at your Monthly cable bill. Now after you realize what a deal it is. Add in free Amazon shipping, free Amazon prime music. Which is iTunes with most of the music being free to own, and now you realize that this article no longer makes sense.

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