Robin Brown

So, New Musical Express editor Conor McNicholas has been appointed boss of Top Gear’s online and print presence.

McNicholas was not a popular choice as the new editor of the NME among its readers, and the consensus seems to be that McNicholas took the paper towards a gossipy centre, populated by rather shit new young bands with silly hair and not much besides.

I can’t really comment, as no-one reads NME past the 21st birthday – I still have the last copy I ever bought in 1999 – but from the times I’ve skimmed through it since it’s practically unrecognisable from the publication it once was (it’s described elsewhere as ‘a dishwater-dull industry cum-rag with an editor who resembles a spoon in a suit’).

I know virtually nothing about McNicholas, but pundits seem to reckon he didn’t know a great deal about music. It seems unlikely to me that he knows a huge amount about about cars, though he professes to love cars – either way he has no pedigree that I can find in the automotive industry.

McNicholas has got the gig – as it seems to me – because he’s thought to have a good understanding of taking brands into the digital age. The NME’s roll out of digital coverage across radio and TV stations and the web has been impressive, especially considering the fact that the print version was thought not long for this world at the start of the decade.

He’s the first of what’s likely to be the most famous of a new breed of multi-platform editors who don’t require any specific knowledge or understanding of the subject matter their platforms cater for. In itself that’s no bad thing – I can mix it with the best of them when it comes to digital waffling – but I think it’s bad news when wedded to a financial imperative.

In some ways this should be lauded as forward-thinking, and will probably prove to be lucrative. But the flip side is that Top Gear will lose value as a serious motoring publication. Even though a good deal of its draw must inevitably come from the TV programme, Top Gear writers know their onions and feature writing by some fairly serious names.

I’m a little dubious that the mag will continue in that way with McNicholas at the helm. As with the NME, attempts to capitalise on a brand name must inevitably draw a magazine back to the centre ground, so as not to alienate casual subscribers, readers or viewers.

I didn’t read NME in the 80s heyday, but the 90s paper was packed with serious, funny features and took in some very niche and obscure talents. To my jaded eyes, NME looks more like Heat magazine today.

I think something similar will happen to Top Gear, as with money and resources it wouldn’t take much to turn a global brand into a massive cash cow. A significantly-extended web presence and pushes into podcasts, radio, vidcasts, and multimedia seem likely in a rather more all-things-to-all-men sense.

I find a lot of this fairly depressing, as there seems to be a consensus that to make a publication, or a brand, successful it has be dragged towards some sort of dumbed-down middle ground.

The change in the NME is an obvious example, as are the likes of lads and ents mags these days – Heat used to be a genuine attempt at an ents and culture mag. Where once there was Loaded, which did have its fair share of quality writing under James Brown there are now Nuts and Zoo, which amount to celebrity tit mags.

McNicholas is likely to work some similar ‘magic’ on Top Gear. I find it unlikely that the likes of Clarkson and May will greet this news with much enthusiasm.

As wedded as Clarkson, particularly, is to lots of cash the pair of them are genuine in their fogeyish dislike of the sort of thing McNicholas represents.

I may be midjudging McNicholas, he may be a secret car buff, but with statements (which I understand is genuine) like this I don’t hold out much hope:

“From Arctic Monkeys to Aston Martin, I’m looking forward to being at the heart of another iconic British multi-platform brand.”

If McNicholas thought he got grief from NME readers for not knowing his stuff, that’s nothing compared to what he’ll get from the petrolhead fraternity.