The Daily Mail Slammed The Grand Tour As A Failure Compared To Old Top Gear. They’re Completely Wrong.

The Daily Mail (TDM) recently reported that The Grand Tour bombed when compared to Top Gear. TDM was specifically referring to the older version of Top Gear when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May were the hosts. Here’s why they are completely wrong.

On Febuary 8th, in the article linked above, TDM claimed that TGT’s ratings plunged when compared to the Top Gear that featured everyone’s favorite car TV presenters. There are a few key differences that we need to address that proves that to be a bit misleading.

Two totally different types of delivery

While it may be true that The Grand Tour’s ratings weren’t as large as Top Gear’s were when the trio was on, it’s important to remember that Amazon Prime video streaming is not the BBC. Amazon buying the rights to the new show was essentially a marketing ploy for people to sign up for Prime and watch the show. And they succeeded in that because in the same Daily Mail article they report that “it is believed to have encouraged more people to subscribe to Amazon Prime Video, who were different from existing viewers.” The BBC has a long history and has channels all over the world where it can reach people with a TV. This reach it far greater than any streaming service, even given how large Amazon has become.

The exact numbers are 2.3 million Amazon Prime viewers in December alone. TDM compared that to the 5.8 million viewers the last episode of Top Gear with the boys brought, and by numbers alone one might think ti was a failure; essentially what TDM was claiming. Let’s face it, when a huge publication like TDM says something “plunged” they are said it’s failing.

It’s actually succeeding massively

Like I mentioned above, the reach and audience are completely different for the BBC and Amazon Prime. It’s an apples and oranges thing. SO we have to look at TGT’s real competition, other streaming shows on the same platform. So how did TGT stack up?

Well good news on that front. The boys were the most watched show on Amazon Prime UK. And it wasn’t even close.

That image is from GFK Insights who has access to that sort of data. You’ll notice that compared to the second place show, The Man in the High Castle, was 21% behind The Grand Tour in AMazon users and nearly two times less streamed when compared to TGT. That’s a pretty staggering number and only goes to show that TGT was a massive success compared to the rest of the shows on Prime.

Daily Mail bias?

This isn’t the first time that TDM has gotten into it with Clarkson. Back in July of last year, TDM reported that James May said that they were “very chuffed” at the fact that Chris Evans was let go from the new iteration of Top Gear. TDM said in it’s headline that it was a victory parade which led to Clarkson slamming the publication as fabricating a story out of nothing (which they kinda did).

So is this TDM getting back at Clarkson and company by saying the show isn’t doing as well as their past show? It’s plausible yes, considering their history. Good news is, it doesn’t matter because TGT is still signed for another two seasons and they’re filming right now. The ratings are good and TDM is wrong.