LOLBOOHOO. First a mischaracterization, and now an insinuation. Someone is catching so many hurt feels today.
The Bill Simmons Thread
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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Really? Seems like a weak reason to suspend/ban someone, but we haven't had many lately, so any excuse is a good one for me.
It's true. An attorney posting that he couldn't possibly have misrepresented someone because he had quoted him is like peak message board bs.
I could post for a thousand years and not even come close to that.
I am well aware and share the Arliss hatred Simmons espoused. My guess is that Any Given Wednesday costs a pittance (relative to HBO's other original content) to make. While HBO has shown a willingness to kill pricey shows that don't pull enough audience (pulling the plug on Deadwood should cost someone their soul), they have given a much longer leash to less expensive fare. So since Simmons is not trying to create a period drama my guess is he gets another season or two to see if he can make it work.
Wait. Did Way Back really get shown the door for that. He's been around a bit. I liked the schtick.
He got a little personal, but not THAT bad...
He got a little personal, but not THAT bad...
The Washington Post with a piece about the awful ratings for the HBO show, which also reminded me just how terrible The Ringer has been so far:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/10/28/ratings-for-bill-simmonss-hbo-show-have-hit-rock-bottom/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/10/28/ratings-for-bill-simmonss-hbo-show-have-hit-rock-bottom/
I'll say again, looking solely at live ratings really isn't a good way to judge the show's performance. But it's telling that HBO hasn't released any weekly data that included DVR, VOD and streaming in quite a while.
This really shouldn't be a huge surprise, though. Simmons pieces got decent traffic online, but nothing that would suggest there were millions of viewers eagerly waiting for his presence on TV. Other, less heralded, writers got more page views.
Simmons is a lot like Twitter, he appeals to people who like to talk about media. So his broad appeal can be a bit overstated.
This really shouldn't be a huge surprise, though. Simmons pieces got decent traffic online, but nothing that would suggest there were millions of viewers eagerly waiting for his presence on TV. Other, less heralded, writers got more page views.
Simmons is a lot like Twitter, he appeals to people who like to talk about media. So his broad appeal can be a bit overstated.
He stinks right now. He's not writing, his tv show is medicore, the podcast's quality has slipped hard recently, and I haven't liked The Ringer anywhere near as much as I did Grantland. It feels like he's waiting for someone else to tell him what to focus on.
Simmons was something you were kind of excited to stumble upon on the internet when it seemed the media landscape was the same as/ going to continue like it was in the pre-internet age. He was a liberated voice where his peers weren't/ couldn't be.
The scope of available content and quality has obviously skyrocketed and there is no chance--none--that that guy is still worth a big audience's time and attention. He's just not that interesting or talented. He was smart in the ways he extended the window he was afforded, but there's no reason we all have to still hitch our wagon to his star where this stuff is concerned. He's so thoroughly nothing special it's actually impressive he's lasted this long.
The scope of available content and quality has obviously skyrocketed and there is no chance--none--that that guy is still worth a big audience's time and attention. He's just not that interesting or talented. He was smart in the ways he extended the window he was afforded, but there's no reason we all have to still hitch our wagon to his star where this stuff is concerned. He's so thoroughly nothing special it's actually impressive he's lasted this long.
Eh, I think he's still talented. He's just not good at TV, never really has been. It always struck me as strange that the guy who was out in front of internet writing and podcasting went with a very traditional TV model.
I also think that sometimes creative types are better when they have a machine to rage at. Simmons is his own machine now.
I also think that sometimes creative types are better when they have a machine to rage at. Simmons is his own machine now.
Well, he's got talent, sure, but if you're looking for whatever it is he would offer, aren't there easily 4 or 5 people out there that do it better? With greater insight? What is it Bill Simmons offers me that others can't top?
I think his appeal is/ was more tied to a time and context than most and he's trying to figure out relevance in the wake of that time and context. He doesn't have that "next," adaptive impulse to keep getting better as things change around him. Just mho of course, not trying to knock liking him on an individual level.
But yeah, whether I'm right or wrong, his big issue right now is, like you say--being on TV is just a non-starter for him. edit--and I think your last sentence here is getting at what I was trying to say a bit--he had a great talent for raging against a particular machine that may be gone forever; he's got to adapt and I personally just don't see it in him.
I strongly disagree with your first premise and seriously doubt your second. I've found little to value on that site.
Part of our difference may be simply preference of form - I enjoy long form much more than quick hits. But I don't think it's really up for debate that the talent is nowhere near what he accumulated at Grantland. There's just very few writers there that I like. At Grantland, I would read stuff I wasn't even that interested in because I liked the author and wanted to check it out. I'll grant that I don't have that history with Ringer writers, at least not yet, but I tend to think that's more because they're not good than it is because of their infancy. I also find the pop culture topics to be inane and uninteresting, whereas Grantland had great pieces on that stuff.
Different strokes and all. Shrug.
I started reading Simmons at the end of college on whatever AOL crap page he was on. He was much closer to my age than the other sport writers, especially local columnists, and he joked about pop culture that was familiar to me, and relatively recent. It was definite fresh air stuff. It felt like a funny friend writing a column to make me laugh. And it was mostly about the city I lived in and the teams I rooted for, with some college experience jokes thrown in. It was pretty perfect. But as he moved to bigger formats the coverage got broader. The pop culture got either more dated, or more current but about crap I just didn't care about. A Billy Zabka joke when I was 21 was hilarious. Now, not so much. And a joke about Taylor Swift or whatever clown is on the latest Bachelor is just not for me. The Manning Face was great because I was watching the same game with the same rooting interest as him. Now he's spending 10 minutes dissecting the body language of an NBA player who plays for a team on the other end of the country that I may have seen play 2 or 3 times, if that. So his appeal has diminished to almost zero for me, and has to do with both of us not being who we were 18 years ago.
Also, he is shitty at being natural on camera, and his show is incredibly lazy in format and boring.
Also, he is shitty at being natural on camera, and his show is incredibly lazy in format and boring.
I just remembered that a staple of the old BSG media round-up links was that Wednesday was the worst sports media day of the week. Granted, a lot has changed since those days, but I suspect Deitsch is on to something. (I also wish he'd get back to media mockery and criticism--along with analyzing the NBA, he was really good at it.)
FWIW, podcast data is notoriously unreliable. Most of the time people report "downloads" and getting at actual listening data ranges from incomplete to impossible. I sure hope Simmons is doing more than 400-500K downloads for his podcast, because that's not great.
Speaking of podcasts, Simmons deciding to restart his and House's NFL picks segment on Friday with a new format and a clean slate because they were both sucking so badly was one of the Simmonsiest things he's done in a while.
I'm with Pap, I'm not a fan of the Ringer at all. Too much NBA/NFL, too much pop culture, not enough baseball, not enough NHL. Simmons lost a ton of talent when Grantland got pulled and he's had something of a struggle to find new voices.
They're pumping out the same fucking hot take on Russell Westbrook over and over when a World Series that is legitimately captivating the sports world is going on. Five articles in six days is not enough content on that front. They haven't run an NHL article in three weeks. So if you like long-form, something they only do sporadically, and you aren't enamoured with the NBA/NFL media circus of character tests, bullshit dumps, This Regular Season Game That Doesn't Mean Anything Means Something and will-he/won't-he, there's fuck-all on the site you care about.
They're pumping out the same fucking hot take on Russell Westbrook over and over when a World Series that is legitimately captivating the sports world is going on. Five articles in six days is not enough content on that front. They haven't run an NHL article in three weeks. So if you like long-form, something they only do sporadically, and you aren't enamoured with the NBA/NFL media circus of character tests, bullshit dumps, This Regular Season Game That Doesn't Mean Anything Means Something and will-he/won't-he, there's fuck-all on the site you care about.
Advertisers have gotten wise to this and a major part of the big podcast platforms is that they're able to isolate and identify individual users. That 400-500K is almost certainly qualified, no-dupe (or as close to it as you can get) listens. It might be inflated by 10-20%, but the tech has gotten solid.
I've yet to see Apple release any listening data. If podcast listening occurs offline or via Apple I'm not sure how it's measured. Got a vendor to recommend? I've talked to many. They're all seriously flawed.
The Ringer has been pretty good the last few weeks. They don't have a Wesley Morris, Brian Phillips or Zach Lowe but their NFL, music, and TV coverage is much stronger as a whole than Grantland.
The voices on the site are younger and more diverse than Grantland was which is a plus. You're not going to see much NHL and MLB coverage on a younger leaning site because those sports aren't as popular with those demographics.
The voices on the site are younger and more diverse than Grantland was which is a plus. You're not going to see much NHL and MLB coverage on a younger leaning site because those sports aren't as popular with those demographics.
I read Morris a lot when he was with the Globe and no doubt he is a talented writer--but he also embodies everything I dislike about film critics. Gratuitous overwriting, inability to review film in a vacuum, obvious predetermined bias in some cases and the consistent commitment to a film being a part of some broad societal narrative. For me I think he is better in a print format where his rambling his restricted.
If HBO isn't releasing streaming data for this show, I think the first run ratings are useless. The people that would be watching this show aren't really the "appointment viewing" type. Especially for a show that can easily be digested a few days after it airs. The most alarming thing for an HBO exec would be the startling lack of viral content that the show has produced.
That definitely doesn't seem like something that Simmons can produce. I don't think I've ever seen a friend randomly share a clip from this show on twitter/facebook.
The interview with Paul Pierce was fun, I look forward to seeing/hearing him in the media more and more after he retires.
That definitely doesn't seem like something that Simmons can produce. I don't think I've ever seen a friend randomly share a clip from this show on twitter/facebook.
The interview with Paul Pierce was fun, I look forward to seeing/hearing him in the media more and more after he retires.
The Ben Affleck defending Brady clip from the first episode got shared a lot and talked about by a lot of surprising people in my circles (my mom and aunt both asked me about it and neither follows Simmons or has HBO). I found that interesting and thought the show might be actually be a hit. But you're right since then there's been nothing and certainly nothing compared to John Oliver his first season. Those clips were everywhere.
The video segments from his show just aren't that good and I'm someone who doesn't really mind the show. The San Diego stadium one could have been decent but he tried to be too funny. That voice he uses when he's yelling or saying "this is crazy" is obnoxious. Either try to be funny but actually make them funny or do a ton of research and make a point, like Oliver does or Katie Nolan has been doing about sports. Her show has been both funnier and better on serious issues.
The video segments from his show just aren't that good and I'm someone who doesn't really mind the show. The San Diego stadium one could have been decent but he tried to be too funny. That voice he uses when he's yelling or saying "this is crazy" is obnoxious. Either try to be funny but actually make them funny or do a ton of research and make a point, like Oliver does or Katie Nolan has been doing about sports. Her show has been both funnier and better on serious issues.
Why does it seem like the Ringer, Channel 33 and Any Given Wednesday exist in completely separate universes? It seems like there is a missed opportunity in building a narrative that runs across all three platforms. It seems like there are Simmons readers or podcast listeners that don't have an interest in crossing over to the other venues where he's available.
Well he doesn't really have readers anymore since he's written like two or three articles since the Ringer debuted.
Does Simmons really have no one else on the planet he can discuss baseball with other than JackO? Not a single person at FanGraphs or some other writer can take his calls?
I think the best you're going to do is target audiences by genre.
Still, the big money B2B companies have little to gain in this space for the time being.
That's what the channel's baseball podcasts are for, it has Lindbergh (Baseball Prospectus, 538) and Michael Baumann (Grantland), they have on some interesting guests too.
JackO is a running bit, for the same reason he guesses the games with his friends instead of his football writers. That was in some ways the pattern on Grantland too, he occasionally has indepth stuff, but mostly his podcast is entertainment and some big names his pull gets, the other pods have the more intensive coverage.
You think Simmons has any interest in talking about baseball? What is this, 2005? JackO's his buddy pal and the Fangraphs writers aren't.
His podcast has really slipped in the past few months. Since the start of football, the only guests have been Sal, Lombardi, Ringer staff, friends, or family. (Jimmy Kimmel was the only one not to fit into those categories.) I'm not sure why he's having issues booking or if his numbers have slipped like his television show, but the podcast has become very repetitive each week.