‘Expensive’ Top Gear Trio ‘worth it’

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has described the deal to bring Jeremy Clarkson and his fellow Top Gear presenters to Amazon Prime as “very, very, very expensive” but has denied the service is a loss-leader for the company.

Bezos was speaking to the UK’s Daily Telegraph following last month’s deal to launch a new motoring show https://www.c21media.net/top-gear-trio-sign-with-amazon/ with Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

The trio had been hot property since Clarkson was axed from long-running, lucrative BBC series Top Gear following a fracas with a producer.

Bezos didn’t reveal the specifics of the deal but said it was “very, very, very expensive,” adding: “They’re worth a lot and they know it.”

He continued: “It can’t just be one show, it has to be a number of things. We have a lot of things in the pipeline, which I think viewers in the UK and around the world are going to love. And I think Clarkson’s new show is going to be one of those.”

Bezos denied that the £79-per-year Prime was a loss leader for Amazon, despite investing heavily in not only Clarkson and co but also other originals such as Transparent.

“I don’t really think of it in that way – I think of it as a single piece,” Bezos said.

“I think we’re in a golden age of television, so if you go back in time even just five years, you couldn’t get A-list talent to do TV serials, or, if you could, it was a rare thing. But that’s flipped completely.

“The investment is very high now in serialised TV, and the amount of time you have to tell a story is much greater. That format change opens up a lot of storytelling possibilities, which, when mixed with the movie-like production standards, and the A-list talent, is why we’re seeing amazing television.”