A lot more.

 

like 6-7 million


and as others have stated the BBC really screwed itself by still calling it top gear. it's IMPOSSIBLE to make another "top gear" and have it be as good as top gear.

 

The last season with the trio averaged 6.5 million viewers.

 

oh well.

now it's in line with fifth gear

 

Well, by my math, that means that there are roughly 4-5 million viewers who simply have to get over Clarkson's departure and accept the fact that he is gone. Boycotting the show isn't going to get him back.

 

In 2002 when the Clarkson version of this show was rebooted it had 3.5 million, and final version that aired with the trio was 5.3 million.

One of the things to realize is how public opinion is driven by what they read in the UK press which is notoriously partisan to a fault. They have been piling on this story with supposed "leaks" from the set for months. Combine that with a prickly and difficult jerk like Chris Evans and you see that people won't look at the rest of the show with any objectivity.

 

Its not about boycotting the show. I just don't have any interest in watching the show now. i tried, but even the later episodes that I've heard are better, just don't hold any appeal to me. I'd rather watch other things or do other things.

People only have a finite amount of leisure time to devote to watching a TV show, the fact that ratings are down is indicative of the fact that the majority of the show's viewership simply no longer wants to watch the show...not that its some sort of "organized boycott". They're just watching or doing other things instead.

Like right now...I have all the episodes of the latest series on DVR. In fact I watched the Patagonia special last night. I just don't have any interest in watching the new ones...I'd rather spend time on CL, or watch a movie with my wife, or watch old reruns of Clarkson Top Gear I've seen 30 times. I've been watching more car reviews on YouTube, I've been enjoying Jay Leno's show...

Used to be a ton of such things about Clarkson Top Gear too. "Look what Jeremy said now" blah blah blah. People just don't want to watch the show now, bottom line...and they're not watching clearly.

Consumers don't owe anybody anything. They had one shot to reboot TopGear and they blew it. Thats all there is to it. Look at the first episode, ratings were pretty strong...viewers gave it a chance...in fact they stuck it out the whole first episode even when it was pretty terrible...usually in that situation you'd loose viewers in the back half... but the product was poor and they lost their customers. Thats how it goes.

 

I think it's more accurate to say that there are 4-5 million people who are just waiting for the trio's new show on amazon. It's not like there aren't alternatives and that people who aren't watching are making that choice just to do it.

 

Boycotting the show will show those knucklehead executives who really runs the show.

 

Nobody wants to stare at a ginger who doesn't stop shouting .

 

No...not in this case. Clarkson's gone...boycott or no boycott.

 

Well, it has shown them. There's nothing they can do about it but they know the trios value now.

 

Maybe "bottom gear"

 

Many chose boycott, myself included.

BBC can go jump in a lake.

 

For me TG was the Game of Thrones of the car show buffet. It was lively, it was damn good commentary, and unexpected with the ape, the teeth whitener, and captain slow lol. Excellent television for those interested in cars or not.

The issue which I guess in some ways resolved itself, was that by the end of the last season, I personally felt, they were running out of material, and the specials were not as "magical" as they once were. One could predict with quite certainty what was in the script. And whatever events took place, kind of overshadowed the staleness of the show and let the Top Gear we all knew end without being cancelled for lack of ratings (something that eerily is reminiscent of what Jeremy had said about how he envisioned Top Gear to end).

Now the new Top Gear with Leblanc Evans, Harris, Sabine, etc, had a hard act to pick up. The issue i personally saw was that, the cast is wayyy to big. Too many members, too many different branches of the same tree (TG, EG). Plus the power struggle between Leblanc and Evans was quite evident from day one. This had happened with the old crew as well, but you couldnt really pick up on it during the show, only through gossip tabloids. The problem still exists even after Evans dep. There a billion ways to solve it I assume, but the simplest needs to be that they should attempt to be more conversationalists on a weekend adventure, rather then the anchors of news at 11. Everyone seems quite on edge, waiting to be dropped out of the frame so they can relax.

The grand tour is going to be interesting as well. Theyre moving to a specials only type of production. If they can put on new material and new challenges then well you have a hit. If they move to the same Cheap car challenege, supercar challenege, then its gonna become the Amazon version of American Top Gear.