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Nine’s Top Gear audience falls below when it was on SBS

Top Gear is now consistently rating less on Nine than the show did before it was poached from SBS1, an analysis of audience figures indicates.

Yesterday’s episode picked up an average metro audience of just 647,000, according to preliminary overnight figures from OzTam.

By contrast, the final series on SBS1 in 2009 pulled in an average metro audience of 953,000.

Indeed, of the nine series of the UK motoring show aired by SBS, only the first three pulled in smaller average audiences than Top Gear did last night.

Source: OzTam/ SBS

Top Gear debuted on Nine in February last year with an audience of 1.7m, number one for the night.

One important factor to note  is that Top Gear, made by the BBC, now faces a much more competitive free TV battleground with the launch of a string of secondary channels. At 8.30pm yesterday, Nine’s audience was split across Top Gear on Nine’s main channel (647,000), Hoarders on Gem (exact number unavailable as it was outside the top 50 digital shows, but below 96,000) and Survivor Redemption Island (305,000).

However, leaving ratings numbers aside, Top Gear has faded from winning the night in the battle of the primary channels last year to 18th for the night yesterday.

After last week’s Top Gear USA special rated 771,000, the Herald Sun quoted analyst Steve Allen as saying that viewers had been baffled by the changing mixture of repeats and new episodes. He said: “They have ruined the franchise.”

In Nine’s daily analysis of its performance, Nine today points out that Top Gear does reach key demographics. It said: “Top Gear was a Top Ten performer across the 5 City Metro, along the East Coast and in Melbourne with People 25-54, 18-49 and 16-39.”

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