This is quite sad news, should it turn out to be true.
Yes, Fifth Gear was always Top Gear's dumb, slightly retarded cousin, but let's face it - it was still better than 99% of the shows on TV. It was still entertaining, still a good way to burn ~40 mins.
Yes, it had some annoying points. The guest bits were rarely non-tedious and the website promo/competition stuff wasted time which could have been filled with a car going sideways. And then of course there was the whole Tim Lovejoy/Cafe set debacle. But I still watched it (then went onto the forums to bitch about how bad he was... oh, the irony).
While the past few series' of FG have been quite good, all things considered, it has suffered somewhat from trying to play the Top Gear game - pizzazz, highlarious stupidity and so forth. Everyone knows that outfoxing a fox is pretty darn hard to do, so why bother? There was nothing wrong with FG when I first started watching it around series 6-7; it was basic and simple, and both entertaining and informative.
Personally I think they've suffered a bit from having too many presenters... I've not missed VBH in the last series, and while I have nothing against Tim Shaw, I think Johnny, Tom, Tiff and (possibly) Jason are really the core that is necessary to make the show work.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the bullet really has been fired through FG's head. Anything beyond a SIARPC appearance by Tiff on TG is highly unlikely, but if the TGA producers aren't convinced they've got the hosts required to make the series float, they could do a LOT worse than pick up Tom or Johnny... Australian audiences don't mind the accent either... anyone talking about cars in an accent other than british can't be trusted anyway