Director of BBC Studios Mark Linsey said that Chris Evans “is stepping aside from his duties on Top Gear”.
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Mixed reviews for the show came from critics, and today Evans has said he’s given it his “best shot” on his Twitter account.
“The team are beyond brilliant, I wish them all the best”, Evans, 50, tweeted.
According to Chris, his stepping down would be the single best thing he can do now to help the cause so that “Top Gear” can pile up their ratings again. The troubles continued as the season premiere was slammed by viewers, with fans of the show saying it was best when Evans was not on the screen.
BBC thought it could continue to do the amazingly popular Top Gear show without the three hosts who actually made it popular.
There is already speculation about the likely line-up for second series of the new version of Top Gear. More recently, co-host Matt LeBlanc is understood to have given showrunners a quiet ultimatum that either Evans goes, or he does.
Chris joined the show last June following Jeremy Clarkson and other presenters’ departure.
“Top Gear UK” lead personality Chris Evans abruptly announced that he’ll be stepping down as host of the relaunched show, with the news following reports of a slump in ratings and less-than-ideal chemistry between Evans and the other cast members.
A day earlier, the BBC was standing by Evans, with a spokesman telling The Telegraph: “Chris Evans will host tomorrow’s Radio 2 breakfast show as usual”.
“It must be a little bit painful for him to receive this reaction from everybody and I don’t think he’d want to continue, I probably wouldn’t want to continue if I was getting constant criticism either”, added McCarthy.
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Prior to the launch of the series, Evans told the Guardian that he would be “disappointed” if the show had fewer than 5 million viewers, but the series opener only brought in an audience of 4.3 million. This incident also saw the departure of co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May. Top Gear is also the biggest motoring media channel on YouTube with 1.2 billion video views.
