The second episode of the new, rebooted Top Gear lost 1.6 million viewers over the premiere episode, but everything is fine!
The opening episode on the new Top Gear season reached 4.3 million people while this weeks episode only managed to reach an average of 2.8 million, according to BBC News. Sunday’s episode saw a peak in viewership of 3.3 million towards the end.
The last series of old-new Top Gear with Clarkson, Hammond and May opened with first and second week broadcast viewership of 6.41 million and 6.56 million.
Unsurprisingly the new host of Top Gear, Chris Evans, took to Twitter (as he did last week) to rant about the negative reaction in the press. He was probably shouting out-loud while tweeting this.
Beyond the irony of proclaiming newspapers to be living in the past, Evans does have a point.
Total viewership for last week’s debut episode was 9 million on Sunday including the online audience. Of course that leaves out the BBC America showing on Monday and all of the other means of viewing the show that try very hard to not be counted.
While a fair point, it’s likely that a drop in the television audience will be reflected in a drop in online viewership as well, but we’ll have to wait and see what the BBC, or perhaps Evans, reports this week.
The new series still has time to land on its feet, or perhaps rethink things after this season. There are some good elements sprinkled throughout, and the Top Gear audience is one of the most vocal I’ve ever been a part of. If the show-makers don’t get the message on what is and isn’t working, they’re ignoring the messages.
Either way, I’ll be watching this entire season. Mostly because I sort of feel like I have to. Let’s talk about it.