Jeremy Clarkson has called on British broadcasters to merge into a single \u201cBritflix\u201d platform to survive, as he warned that senior producers were continuing to \u201cdrain away\u201d from the cash-strapped TV industry.<\/p>\n
The former Top Gear presenter said that having just finished filming the sixth season of his Amazon Prime show Clarkson\u2019s Farm, there were now many members of the crew wondering where they would find their next job.<\/p>\n
Clarkson said competition from streamers and digital platforms such as YouTube meant that Britain\u2019s main broadcasters should come together to make \u201cbigger, fewer, better programmes\u201d. It follows an exodus of experienced TV producers<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n The 66-year-old said he believed the BBC would eventually merge with Channel 4<\/a>, an idea both broadcasters have repeatedly rejected. However, he said the industry in the UK would have to go far further to compete.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually think that television in this country can only survive \u2013 and should do this \u2013 [if] the whole lot merge,\u201d he said during an appearance at the RTS London convention. \u201cBBC, ITV, Sky, Channel 4, Channel 5.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s 35, 40 people on the [Clarkson\u2019s Farm] crew who are now sitting at home thinking, \u2018how are we going to pay our mortgage?\u2019 There\u2019s very little work for producers and crew out there.<\/p>\n \u201cI know a huge amount of producers that I\u2019ve worked with over the years, really, really clever people \u2013 decent, sensible, hard-working people \u2013 who cannot find work in the industry. They cannot find it, and they\u2019re making these smaller and smaller programmes with fewer and fewer people involved in the making of them.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are draining away from the industry \u2013 this huge pool of talent \u2013 and I think that if we had one great big Britflix, let\u2019s call it, where you could all come together and actually make properly good \u2026 but bigger, fewer, better programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarkson said BBC News should be separated and funded through a licence fee.<\/p>\n Despite working with Amazon, a major streamer, Clarkson said he thought he would have to come up with an even bigger idea to compete with the rise of content creators on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re currently thinking about what we do after Clarkson\u2019s Farm, and it\u2019s going to have to be something bigger to stand out, to protect us from this onslaught from [social media content] underneath,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has to be unbelievably ambitious.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to make a television show work unless you\u2019re cooking on the moon or doing something incredible, and that\u2019s where I think television has to get bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about moving Channel 4 content on to iPlayer, Priya Dogra, Channel 4\u2019s chief executive, said: \u2018I don\u2019t see why not.\u2019 Photograph: Royal Television Society\/Youtube<\/p>\n Clarkson\u2019s comments are a sign of the continuing angst in the TV world over the future of the industry in Britain.<\/p>\n The idea of merging UK broadcasters has been raised many times in recent years, while the explosion of competition from global platforms, as well as significant inflation in the costs of making television, has led to several recent mergers.<\/p>\n Sky announced a long-awaited \u00a31.6bn deal to buy ITV\u2019s broadcasting and streaming arm earlier this year, creating the UK\u2019s biggest commercial broadcaster. In the US, Paramount<\/a> has a proposed $81bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery.<\/p>\n