edmunds Inside Line reviews the ratings of Top Gear America

Correct. But that's not weird ...it's totally normal. Same thing for other popular shows like Fast Lane Daily, VOD Cars and (so far as I know) The Smoking Tire -- basically non-existant web site traffic. Official sites are there as a service, not a focus.
 
Interpolating from online video sites such as youtube TST must have hundreds of millions of viewers then.
 
You made the mistake again of looking at one source and extrapolating that all sources of viewership. The video distribution world doesn't work that way -- though you seem rather intent to make it so. We have about 20 major distribution partners. I love YouTube, personally. But we have several larger -- much larger -- audiences. Google "Driving Sports TV" if it's really biting you. I'll probably leave it at that.
 
Google "Driving Sports TV" if it's really biting you. I'll probably leave it at that.

I've done that long ago, but the results are not helpful.
Your about page is more helpful, but it lacks those big distribution channels you were talking about. It lists youtube, itunes, mevio, blip, streetfire, and "other online locations". Many of those don't publish viewer figures, but I assume the audience for all of those platforms knows about youtube and uses it, so low figures on youtube should reflect on the other similar platforms that do not publish data.
Unless there is some huge secret way to view your show that you don't tell anyone about, I'll keep on doubting your weekly millions of viewers.
 
There are over 20 million people who watched a guy freak out about a double rainbow. So saying you have more YouTube views (and other bigger channels than YouTube?) than a car show on TV isn't a valid argument in my opinion. Comparing a two minute clip and an hour long show is not apples to apples. Following that logic, I could say double rainbow guy is about as popular as Monday Night Football which has around 20 million viewers as well.
 
@narf We're kind of getting off track here and you're asking questions but obviously not really "listening" to my responses so I'll just leave it at that.

@leadfoot13 that's not an appropriate analogy (I could see how it may seem correct if you're a viewer, but if you're a producer and make a living in this market it's a flawed argument) so it doesn't actually support your own point, nor does it disprove anything I've claimed.

Now, back to the TGA numbers. As much as the network is saying how pleased they are with the early figures, I hope for the show's sake it can pull in a bigger audience. Because they aren't hitting much higher than what some online series' are pulling these days in the low millions. (Anyone can make a car video buy in the millions each week, with laser-sighted demographic targets.) The companies that buy ads on the show know just how many viewers are available online and they're slowly gravitating their buys in that direction. I suspect that the TG name will pull in the first season buys, but season 2 will be the tougher sell at this rate.
 
@narf We're kind of getting off track here and you're asking questions but obviously not really "listening" to my responses so I'll just leave it at that.

You wanted to "leave it at that" in your previous post already. Since you cant "leave it at that", I'll ask one "question" and "promise" to "listen" to the "response". All the evidence coming up following your request to google for "driving sports tv" suggests there are no millions of viewers, nor is there any alternate channel of recieving the videos other than various online platforms - where are those millions of viewers?
 
some online series' are pulling these days in the low millions

What series can pull in millions of viewers within a couple of days? Do you have some actual numbers/facts? I am curious if there are online shows out there that I am missing out on.
edit: narf beat me to asking the same question
 
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What series can pull in millions of viewers within a couple of days? Do you have some actual numbers/facts? I am curious if there are online shows out there that I am missing out on.

For some perspective, the most recent Smoking Tire episode published nine days ago racked up 80k at YouTube, 57k at Streetfire, and an unknown number at iTunes because they don't publish figures or I can't find them without installing that... thing.
 
I already watch Smoking Tire and Fast Lane Daily. From what I know, Smoking Tire and Fast Lane Daily are the two biggest online only car shows? If I am correct, for being a popular car show online, that only comes to 137,000 views (can't imagine iTunes is raking in the viewers). That isn't the millions that ricochet was talking about.
 
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Fast Lane Daily has significantly fewer views per video on YouTube than The Smoking Tire, but a considerably higher number of videos per week... also, they appear to have lots of views on vodcars, but I can't find any viewer figures there.
 
Every outlet is its own island. Success on YouTube doesn't mean success elsewhere. Likewise the reverse scenario. On YouTube you can easily see that DSTV does about 250,000 views a week on average (though, you'd have to check our count tally in a 7 day period). Views go much, much higher when we get special featured positioning. The balance of that 1+ million I stated that week is made up in views from iTunes, Blip.tv, Mevio, Blinx and all the little guys added up. Yes, 1M in a week is pretty do-able. It's not magic. Keep in mind that I still consider my show small for the web video genre. There are many that I expect are larger.

It bears repeating that you can't count YouTube alone to determine the success or failure of an online show. Heck, even Smosh which is one of the largest YouTube shows doesn't rely solely on YouTube for views or income.

Fast Lane Daily, VOD Cars and Garage 419 came out of a startup called Next New Networks. It's backed by investors and features (former?) MTV executives running the biz. When they launched they had a very large push on iTunes and they used their network to feed traffic across their lineup of shows (which also included Threadbanger, Channel Frederator, Indy Mogul, etc.) For August alone NNN claims 151 million views across their lineup. It's my understanding that many of these views are through their iTunes channels (though I don't know that for fact.)

The Smoking Tire seemed to take some benefit from this former relationship when G419 went away and Matt struck out on "his own." This would lead me to believe he still has a large iTunes following. FLD also "left" (kind of) NNN earlier (though maintaining some sort of relationship with NNN) this year and is now with Autostream, along with G419, er, The Smoking Tire. Thanks to that previous relationship they have very large followings (which they absolutely deserve -- both are great shows in their own rights!) Don't discount what cross-network promotion can do, especially with giants like Frederator and Indy Mogul to push viewers your way. It also helps that they managed to get lots of promotion from Apple and iTunes to grow their audience. All these things can build a massive following outside of the YouTube world.

I don't know what kind of traffic TST and FLD pull outside of YouTube these days. So I can't say if they are pulling down numbers greater than their YouTube channels. I would be surprised if they didn't have a lot more traffic outside of YouTube, though, based on their past relationships. But you simply cannot use YouTube as a metric to gauge audience outside of YouTube -- it has no bearing on that.

I'm one of the few guys that doesn't mind talking about audience building and making a living on producing a web series (yes, DSTV is my one and only day job and I support a family of four off of it.) So, if you are still saying that DSTV doesn't have the audience I claim, there's nothing more I can really do to help you out here. Part of the reason I do this (writing an epic post) is that I feel I'm defending against your assertion that we couldn't have the audience we claim. I do this not necessarily for the sake of my own show, but for the industry I represent. There's a popular misconception that you cannot make a living or build an audience doing this and that you have to be on TV to matter. Me and others prove a non-TV model viable every day. (though, to be honest, I wouldn't mind hosting TGUSA) For you to say that's impossible because you don't see the numbers on YouTube is just wrong.
 
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On YouTube you can easily see that DSTV does about 250,000 views a week on average.

:jeremy: Nnnnnnnnnnnno.

Over 4.7 years of membership with YouTube you have racked up 10.5 million views. That's about 40k views per week on average.
 
:jeremy: Nnnnnnnnnnnno.

Over 4.7 years of membership with YouTube you have racked up 10.5 million views. That's about 40k views per week on average.

So, by your consideration the first week we loaded a video on YouTube we had 40,000 views. And now almost 5 years and 132 videos later we're still only getting 40,000 views a week? This, in spite of the fact that roughly 1/2 our total videos were loaded in the last year alone and that YouTube's total viewership has grown exponentially over the same period of time?

That sir, is void of all logic and reason and I can only assume you're just messing with me now. That, or you're only 10 years old.

It's easy to check my YouTube data: As of today the DSTV public profile shows 10,416,292 views. Check back in 7 days and prove me wrong. Go ahead. This really isn't hard to figure out.
 
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So let me get this straight, 1+ million viewers a week from all of your of your sites and 250,000 of those are from YouTube. So if you take a newer video (2011 Genesis Coupe R-Spec vs Subiefest) which has 4,035 views right now on YouTube. That means the other 246,000 views were the 131 other videos you have on YouTube? That means when you release a new video, only 1.6% of the views that week on YouTube are for the new video. Not to be an ass, but I don't trust something until I see some numbers that correlate to each site before I take your word on how many views you get. I assume you have access to those numbers since you know how many views you get each week.
 
So let me get this straight, 1+ million viewers a week from all of your of your sites and 250,000 of those are from YouTube. So if you take a newer video (2011 Genesis Coupe R-Spec vs Subiefest) which has 4,035 views right now on YouTube. That means the other 246,000 views were the 131 other videos you have on YouTube? That means when you release a new video, only 1.6% of the views that week on YouTube are for the new video. Not to be an ass, but I don't trust something until I see some numbers that correlate to each site before I take your word on how many views you get. I assume you have access to those numbers since you know how many views you get each week.

What really sets YouTube apart is that most videos grow in popularity over time. That is a very rare thing in online video and is the #1 reason producers should have a presence on YouTube. For a good example, check out the Insight Stats on this video we posted in 2008 (back when I published the world's largest Subaru magazine, Subiesport.) it's quite a ramp upwards. And, note, this video was shot as a second thought during a photo session we were doing for the magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7CuwseA9v8

This next video link is one we produced last year. It was our first viral hit. It had 600,000 views in a couple days on YouTube alone. Then, over the next year it climbed to 1M views. Now has about 1,000-2,000 a day watch it pretty constantly. Do a search for "GTR" on YouTube and you'll see why it has that much traffic still.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXmOg4QuVCE

YouTube is about search. Quality content rises to the top and becomes more popular over time, which is very much unlike many other platforms. Conversely there's Mevio. It's the opposite of that and is based around "what's on today" which can generated a lot of traffic (check their stats on Compete.com if you like) when featured, but then it falls off quickly because their audience is built around a different type of behavior than YouTube. iTunes videos also have surprising durability over time. In short, each outlet has its own viewership personality and behavior.

Contractually I'm not allowed to discuss the data of some of the partners we work with. Just like YouTube Partners aren't allowed to discuss publicly their AdSense revenue or they could be banned from the program. Even if I could share specifics, there is a competitive advantage for me to not be painting a big bulls-eye on my back for my competition to aim at. I am, however, happy talk about numbers in aggregate and I also have no problem giving breakdowns on any figures that are otherwise publicly available.

The Genesis video was kind of a b-roll collection and was done as a favor to he organizer of the event (an event series I created several years ago). Not our usual series fare these days. I actually think 4k views on YouTube for that was pretty good considering the mish-mosh filming (hard to film when driving, you know?) and has way too much talking head. That said, all our Subiefest footage did better in other parts of the network.
 
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I have never watched one of your videos before today and so I grabbed what I thought was an average video. Like you said you have a lot more viewers on special videos, I am trying to understand how your viewership is spread on an average show. But that appears to not be possible due to contracts. I just had a hard time when you said you had more viewers than TGUS and I go to your site and see that the majority of your videos on YouTube have under 150,000 views. Apparently YouTube is a small factor compared to total viewership for a video.
 
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So, by your consideration the first week we loaded a video on YouTube we had 40,000 views. And now almost 5 years and 132 videos later we're still only getting 40,000 views a week? This, in spite of the fact that roughly 1/2 our total videos were loaded in the last year alone and that YouTube's total viewership has grown exponentially over the same period of time?

That sir, is void of all logic and reason and I can only assume you're just messing with me now. That, or you're only 10 years old.

You introduced an average figure, and that is exactly how averages work. At 10.5 million views, 250k a week will get you along 42 weeks - almost ten months. If the 250k figure was true over the last year alone you would have massively higher total viewer figures, especially considering three of your four most popular clips are over 2.5 years old.

To conclude:
- Your total viewership figure on YouTube over 4.7 years can not even support your claimed weekly average of 250k for ten months.
- Looking at the last year alone, one would have to subtract significant viewer numbers for very popular old clips, resulting in even less time that would be sustainable at 250k a week.
- Also, both examples you posted of popular videos are over a year/over two years old. Those would also reduce the viewership figures for this year to go even further away from 250k a week.
 
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Yes, those videos are older ones because I'm using them as examples on how videos build traffic over time. You're not even trying to understand the conversation I'm attempting to have with you - blatently ignoring context and specifics just to be argumentative. Like I said, I'm happy to discuss things, but Narf, you're just being an ass.
 
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