Top Gear Is Improving, But The Ratings Aren't Just Yet
Despite opening with a strong audience share and 4.4 million viewers, Top Gear hasn’t been faring so well in terms of overnight ratings over the last few weeks. According to Barb (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) figures quoted by Overnights, the second episode suffered a huge drop to 2.8 million, while the actually rather brilliant third episode fell to 2.4 million, and the fourth episode has dropped further.
Naturally, major newspapers across the land are being terribly dramatic and portraying this as the latest blow for the struggling series, pointing out that last weekend’s episode had the lowest ratings for any Top Gear episode since the show’s relaunch in 2002. However, it isn’t all bad news.
Firstly, the drop in viewers is the smallest we’ve seen so far - with episode four netting 2.34 million. This shows that following the first appearances of Chris Harris and Rory Reid - who are arguably carrying the show while the other presenters attempt to find their feet - viewing figures are starting to level off and may yet increase. Secondly, those figures don’t take into account catch-up viewing, something series 23 of Top Gear has fared well with thus far, particularly when it’s competing with the live football matches of Euro 2016 as it has been the last couple of weeks. Yes, the overnight figures are not ideal and are probably concerning BBC bosses, but they don’t show the full picture.
Ratings aside though, we’re just glad the show is improving. The good news is we can expect Harris and Reid in both of the final two episodes - hopefully the BBC will take heed of the pair’s superior critical reception and give them a bigger part to play next series.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
“The last weekend’s episode had the lowest ratings for any Top Gear episode since the show’s relaunch in 2002“ FACT
You made my day…
FACT!!!!
FACT.
Can anyone tell me if Sabine is seriously this bad at English or does she just do it on purpose?
How good is your German?
I think she is laying it on a bit via direction from the producers.
People turned up for the first out of curiosity, the second to watch the train wreck. Now that car culture and everyday Joe is responding positively to Chris Harris, Rory and Matt it’ll even out and probably grow as they get better and grow into it along with Sabine.
Evans and Jordan need to go. I predict that if the make it into the second, then they won’t make it to the third season.
Sabine is just awful. I can understand that not everyone speaks English perfectly, but every line she says just sounds so forced, scripted and awkwardly cringeworthy :/
True but that applies to the other presenters as well. Everything and I mean everything they say sounds scripted and fake
The thing is when I saw the presenter line up I thought, okay BBC you have done great in making an awesome series. I am German so I did not know anything about Evans and little about Jorden (One Formel 1 interview where he was hilarious). But I knew Reid, Harris and Schmitz and I guessed LeBlanc would be a good presenter in the studio and help out the maybe not so crowdtrained other presenters. Sadly was disapointed massively by Evans. Sabine disapointed with her terrible english aswell, but that might get better over the seasons to come (I hope so at least). But hell Reid and Harris made this show into a petrolhead show. My Rating at the Moment is 6.7 out of 10. And it gotten better since Evans took a step backwards and let the carpeople take over.
Too many show runners, Sabine is awful, and i’m not talking about her accent ( since i’m french … ^^)
I’m going to get a lot of flak from the Harris and Reid fanboys but they should really stop providing the viewers with a video review that amounts to nothing more than reading a brochure. The previous hosts would tell you what’s good and what’s not. The current TG seems like an official advert for every car maker. There’s no sense of objective review like Clarkson/May used to by clearly pointing out what’s hot and what’s not. Heck Clarkson would even go to the extent of saying something on a car is rubbish. The previous hosts didn’t care if they never made it to the good books of car manufacturers. The current hosts are all trying to please everyone and that isn’t really going to go down well with the enthusiastic audience of the past.
you probably don’t know about Harris’ history with ferrari then
It’s going to be very hard for them to recover those lost viewers, they had ONE chance to make a good first impression, and they stuffed it up. If only they started with the 3rd episode instead.
And it would be hard enough even if they started pumping out shows on par with the Trio, let alone when they have rubbish parts like the ‘stars in a rallycross car’ segment and wooden delivery from Matt, Sabine and ‘Everybody hates Chris’ Evans.
I think people keep checking GT.. i mean TG to see if its improved or become less irritating, as the potentals there to be a Fifth Gear replacement (thank you Harris and Rory)
Its like having a family party and late in the day you keep coming back to check if your uncle has stopped being ‘that guy’