Comment Re:The BBC doesn't have much latitude here. (Score 2) 662
Hell, just look at the US version of Top Gear which is on a commercial channel (the History Channel because they ran out of WWII video to show and moved on to "reality" programming). The US version just does stunts. They don't do power laps, they don't do the star in a reasonably priced car, they don't do car reviews, they don't do any car news. (They actually did do the power lap times and the star in a reasonably priced car briefly during the first season, but they've since dropped those segments entirely.)
Part of the reason is surely due to time constraints: the US show only has 42 minutes to work with due to the 18 minutes of ads it has to fit the hour slot. But given that the closest to a car review they ever did was a blatant Tesla ad (ironically enough) and the show is almost always "brought to you by $CAR_COMPANY," it's fairly safe to say that the US version doesn't want to offend potential advertisers, and the show is horribly watered down due to it.