PBDWake said:
This is absolutely true. 30 for 30, Grantland, etc. were all great because Bill knows how to curate talent and get the best out of them. The only catch is that I don't know if even Bill Simmons knows that about Bill Simmons
The Bill Simmons Thread
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This is absolutely true. 30 for 30, Grantland, etc. were all great because Bill knows how to curate talent and get the best out of them. The only catch is that I don't know if even Bill Simmons knows that about Bill Simmons
Yeah, me too. I could kind of care less about the rest. I'm sure the show will be fine but I'm not going out of my way to watch it.TheRealness said:
I'm already bummed that we've probably heard the last podcast between Simmons and ABC/ESPN employee Cousin Sal.
I bet not. Kimmel is too strong a brand to piss off. Cousin Sal should be free to go to a video podcastStevie1der said:
If I'm not mistaken, Oliver's ratings have been pretty good and generally better than the variety of 1030pm lead-ins it has inooherited. Makes sense to me that Oliver's not a great fit there.86spike said:
If I'm HBO and I wanted to maximize ratings, I'd pair up OIiver and Simmons away from Sunday...possibly on Monday.
Happily for HBO, they don't so much need to maximize ratings. Lucky bastards.
Sunday is a big audience night for TV, as is Thursday, HBO will likely want to maximize eyeballs in the linear viewing world on Sunday and take care of the rest on HBO Go.Mugsys Jock said:
It would be pretty surprising to me to see them schedule Simmons opposite Sunday, Monday or Thursday Night Football. Content-wise his best shot is probably going into or coming out of the weekend.
Friday makes some sense to me. You have to remember that Simmons has a pretty well-established track record of not driving ratings. I think you stick him on Fridays, the lowest TV usage night of the week, where he has a few days to react to the prior weekend and a whole weekend of upcoming stuff to preview.
I think this is a good deal for both sides and the right home for Simmons, but I'd be pretty conservative on viewership expectations. I think this will be one of HBO's lowest-rated pieces of regular original programming, if not the lowest. Simmons would be a waste of Sunday night real estate.
Friday makes some sense to me. You have to remember that Simmons has a pretty well-established track record of not driving ratings. I think you stick him on Fridays, the lowest TV usage night of the week, where he has a few days to react to the prior weekend and a whole weekend of upcoming stuff to preview.
I think this is a good deal for both sides and the right home for Simmons, but I'd be pretty conservative on viewership expectations. I think this will be one of HBO's lowest-rated pieces of regular original programming, if not the lowest. Simmons would be a waste of Sunday night real estate.
When is his show going to be in season? It's not going to be a 52-week grind. Bill Maher is a Friday show it could flow. Will BS be doing anything with TNT? It's part of the same family and has the NBA?
To go a little further on the viewership potential for Simmons on HBO, consider that the Grantland Basketball Hour averaged a little under 500k viewers on ESPN. HBO is in 60% fewer homes than ESPN so if we dial that number back proportionately you're talking about 200k viewers for premiere airings of a weekly Simmons show on HBO.
Now, you can argue over reasons why a Simmons show on HBO will rate better than a Simmons show on ESPN. Maybe he's attached to better programming, like a Maher or an Oliver. Maybe having subject matter that's broader than just basketball will help. But for what it's worth, at 200k viewers Simmons would rate lower than 23 of the 25 original HBO series that I was able to find numbers for. 200k would be in the ballpark of the Lisa Kudrow show The Comeback and about 100k short of Real Sports. The Foo Fighters show Sonic Highways did about 350k for their premiere airings and maybe that's a reasonable upside for Simmons. Even at that number he wouldn't be remotely in the same stratosphere as the Sunday night shows that really define the HBO brand.
But, you know, all that said if Simmons averages only 200-300k but a third of those people are loyal viewers who consider Simmons one of several good reasons to keep paying for HBO, then the signing is a runaway success for them. I think it's very possible that this can be a great deal financially for both Simmons and HBO while at the same time leaving some observers surprised at how poorly Simmons' digital readership translates to TV viewing.
Now, you can argue over reasons why a Simmons show on HBO will rate better than a Simmons show on ESPN. Maybe he's attached to better programming, like a Maher or an Oliver. Maybe having subject matter that's broader than just basketball will help. But for what it's worth, at 200k viewers Simmons would rate lower than 23 of the 25 original HBO series that I was able to find numbers for. 200k would be in the ballpark of the Lisa Kudrow show The Comeback and about 100k short of Real Sports. The Foo Fighters show Sonic Highways did about 350k for their premiere airings and maybe that's a reasonable upside for Simmons. Even at that number he wouldn't be remotely in the same stratosphere as the Sunday night shows that really define the HBO brand.
But, you know, all that said if Simmons averages only 200-300k but a third of those people are loyal viewers who consider Simmons one of several good reasons to keep paying for HBO, then the signing is a runaway success for them. I think it's very possible that this can be a great deal financially for both Simmons and HBO while at the same time leaving some observers surprised at how poorly Simmons' digital readership translates to TV viewing.
I don't think viewership as we know it is going to be a meaningful metric for much longer. I think this Simmons deal is the plainest indicator yet of the model HBO is starting to develop -- they want to be a Netflix-style platform for movies and original TV shows combined with a platform for a video-podcast series of shows that brings you back to their app regularly. The long play for HBO is to get people, especially kids, to think of HBO not as a TV channel, but as a platform for compelling video entertainment that they visit every day. Something you use daily is definitely worth $15/month, which you'll happily pay to HBO directly instead of your cable company if you are a cord-cutter (which many kids will be).
It sounds like Simmons will have a weekly "anchor" show, with 1-2 video podcasts a week (all of which will also be available as audio podcasts). That keeps you coming back to HBO for content multiple times a week, which I think is their ideal set-up. Although I don't get the sense she's been too successful yet, Katie Nolan kind of paved the way for this approach. She's got her weekly show on Sunday night, then the whole show is uploaded both in toto and segment-by-segment on YouTube, and then she does a weekly 10-minute video, also available on YouTube, where she answers user questions. Given that HBO puts some or all of John Oliver's shows on YouTube every week, I expect they might do something similar with Simmons. I'm very curious to see how they handle this.
It sounds like Simmons will have a weekly "anchor" show, with 1-2 video podcasts a week (all of which will also be available as audio podcasts). That keeps you coming back to HBO for content multiple times a week, which I think is their ideal set-up. Although I don't get the sense she's been too successful yet, Katie Nolan kind of paved the way for this approach. She's got her weekly show on Sunday night, then the whole show is uploaded both in toto and segment-by-segment on YouTube, and then she does a weekly 10-minute video, also available on YouTube, where she answers user questions. Given that HBO puts some or all of John Oliver's shows on YouTube every week, I expect they might do something similar with Simmons. I'm very curious to see how they handle this.
Very true, and Simmons is just the kind of addition that helps achieve that. HBO is adding talent to serve their multi-platform future.
HBO is also going to add new subscribers to access Simmons.
Add 60,000 new subscribers and he's paid for.
HBO is also going to add new subscribers to access Simmons.
Add 60,000 new subscribers and he's paid for.
Most people know John Oliver from the embedded clips that are routinely shared every Monday morning by all manner of pop-culture sites social media. HBO is on to something good there. Simmons could recreate the exact same model with sports-related content - a friendly, funny, poignant guy with something entertaining and meaningful to say - with Simmons. That's assuming he can deliver something as high-quality and sharable. The end goal is to have people place value on the personality and drive them towards subscribing to HBO, not to increase viewership of any particular clip itself.
Dehere said:
nattysez said:
Viewership will always be a meaningful metric to some degree. To produce a compelling show and program effectively, no matter what the delivery mechanism might be, you need to understand the dynamics of viewing behavior.
But it's also clear that as the business model of "TV" diversifies and fragments that it doesn']t make sense to use ratings as the be-all, end-all of evaluating the performance and value of content.
But why subscribe to HBO when you can watch the whole thing for free? I've similar scratched my head at HBO's strategy regarding password-sharing and HBOGO. It seems like bad business to make people think they don't have to pay for your content.dirtynine said:
My guess is it's kind of like a "loss leader". They'll give you more than a tease - enough to get used to how good it is. Once you agree that it's valuable, it's up to HBO to decide how to reel you in. Since full episodes of dramas aren't really viral-ready content, Oliver is really a perfect way for them to make inroads into that market. If HBO had a sketch show - let's just say Mr. Show was around today - I'm pretty sure a few sketches a week would be made streamable for the same reason. Their prestige dramatic shows just don't work in the same context.
I don't know if that's the extent of the strategy but it makes sense to me. I've shared passwords in the past, and if HBO cracked down, now that HBO Now is an option, I'd just subscribe. I'm hooked.
I don't know if that's the extent of the strategy but it makes sense to me. I've shared passwords in the past, and if HBO cracked down, now that HBO Now is an option, I'd just subscribe. I'm hooked.
Focus group of one here but personally the ubiquity of Oliver's clips online has been a strong disincentive against me actually watching the show. Why bother when I know that if he does anything good it will be emailed to me or posted to my facebook wall within twelve hours? Same thing with Amy Schumer. Like her a lot, think she's really talented, see no reason at all to watch her show. I'm always baffled when people describe this dynamic as a great forward-thinking strategy for a media company.
As far as viewership statistics being meaningful, as long as anybody is paying anybody for the right to view or transmit video content, viewership metrics are going to be relevant. They're just going to continue to evolve, which isn't anything new. That's been happening for over 50 years.
As far as viewership statistics being meaningful, as long as anybody is paying anybody for the right to view or transmit video content, viewership metrics are going to be relevant. They're just going to continue to evolve, which isn't anything new. That's been happening for over 50 years.
epraz said:
Although companies are historically scared to rely on it, I think the market has basically shown that if people find value in your content they will be happy to pay you to continue to produce it. Zoomed all the way out, more access leads to more sales.
To me, acting otherwise betrays a lack of trust in either the value of their content or how they've priced it, and I'm happy to pay heed to that by not spending my money on it.
Dehere said:
Yes, that's all I meant. The traditional Nielsen ratings, and even the SD/+7 ratings meant to capture DVR usage, are going to have to evolve to reflect the way people are watching TV these days.
Dehere said:
I'm in the same boat, and this is how I feel about clips of any late-night show, any Comedy Central show, etc. Those clips do not drive my viewership; they make it unnecessary. However, some of those clips contain pre-roll advertising (the Comedy Central clips, most notably), so it's not like the companies are not getting something for the views they accrue online.
And for John Oliver, his "brand" has been helped immeasurably by having his clips online. I'm just not sure to what extent that actually translates into $ for HBO.
John Oliver's show is a dramatically different animal than a sketch show or late night show because the quality of the whole show is uniformly so high. With any of the others they are so hit or miss that only getting clips is getting most of what's funny on the show, with his show the long segments that get posted are what 'drives the conversation' on the internet, but not most of what is funny about the show. His ongoing FIFA coverage for instance is amazing, but I'm biased, I've been listening to his podcast cover FIFA for a very long time. I think having his show run year round is part of how they try to get people to commit to some kind of subscription on an ongoing basis rather than just trying to be able to see GoT and then not really thinking about HBO otherwise.nattysez said:
Doesn't BS just slot into somewhere in the Real Sports ecosystem in his production work? It seems like just using him to build out more content clearly connected to the HBO brand is more of the strategy.
Dehere said:
The data proves that out. For example, Jimmy Fallon puts all of his best bits on YouTube, working under the theory that it "extends his brand" and will lure people to watch his show on NBC. It doesn't. Ratings for Fallon among YouTube users are a tick higher than they were for Jay Leno, but that has more to do with Fallon's younger demographic appeal than the dynamic of "marketing" to those younger viewers on YouTube. It's a classic case of correlation not equaling causation.
But I've also come to believe that for a lot of media companies it's more about "looking smart" to Wall Street than it is about meaningfully driving TV ratings.
Dehere said:
Appreciate the analysis; however, I don't think we should assume Simmons' HBO program will be limited to basketball fans, as the Grantland show effectively was so I think the baseline of 500k is probably a good bit too low.
8slim said:
See, I've been coming to the opinion that in cases like this you almost have to decouple what's good for the talent and what's good for the show. Putting all those clips online probably is good for Jimmy Fallon individually, yet at the same time I think it's neutral-to-negative for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. That's a tough thing to navigate. How do you tell someone to stop doing something that they know is making them more famous without driving a wedge between them and the company? You can't win.
Fully agree that a lot of this is just putting on appearances for Wall Street, and not just Wall Street but also the press and the most senior levels of your own management. And, you know, I don't even fault guys at the Skipper level for taking that approach. It's just much, much easier to ride with the herd. It reminds me of when Dick Ebersol was the only guy in the business who refused to put the time and score on the screen continuously because it might encourage channel-surfing. He was almost certainly right but at some point it's just not worth fighting the fight.
Dehere said:
Agreed. Social media is a perfect case study of this. A personality can build his or her personal brand using the extensive marketing weight of a media company behind them. But then they can take those millions of Twitter followers, Facebook fans or YouTube subscribers with them to their next gig. It's a new dynamic in the talent/employer relationship.
It can probably backfire. I love Seth Meyers "Ya Burnt" bits, but have watched an actual Seth Meyers show fewer than 10 times. That said, late night talk shows are probably a bad example, because they're all monologue, bit, interview, interview, musical guest, so most people will have interest in 2-3 of those things and endure the rest. I would guess a lot of people see a John Oliver bit on YouTube and think "I want to see more of this" and that's pretty much what his whole show is so it does help ratings a little more. What Simmons will do, who knows, but from HBO's perspective, they probably don't care much, they have a half hour filled for the next few years with someone that probably will not be a negative for them, could be a positive and will attract a demo they can encourage to watch Ballers and sports documentaries.
Dehere said:
Yep. I DVR'd some Amy Schumer shows and found that I'd already seen all the good clips on you tube...and the clips that hadn't made it to you tube weren't there for a reason -- they sucked.
As a fan of Simmons and someone who devoured his Jalen and Bill shows, particularly the pre-season stuff, I don't think his skill is particularly in short bits, though, so not sure the analogy to Oliver and/or Schumer is on point. He's a slightly amusing BS artist/gossiper, and I think that lends itself to longer viewing. That could be good for HBO.
The best part of Digital City Bill is that he truly was uncensored in the best sense of the word - he called out the buffoons, phonies and assholes as he saw them. Reading him each morning was a revelation, in the sense of 'Yes, I am NOT the only one who realizes this!'. He was completely muzzled by ESPN - I mean, the stuff he did get in trouble for saying was laughably tame compared to what he used to say on Digital Cities. I seriously hope we get that voice back again, because the sports media needs a guy like Bill to call out their shit.
JimD said:
Especially if he's airing ESPN dirty laundry. The chances of which are extremely extremely extremely remote but I'd be all in on that.
I really wish he was out of contract right now. An opening episode of Simmons interviewing Brady would have been fun.
SidelineCameras said:
I don't think those chances are remote at all. Now, he's going to be smart and sly about it but ESPN pissed off a thin-skinned, much beloved dude with a huge audience and then effectively silenced him for six months. He's going to lash out when he can.
Simmons doesn't seem to be holding a lot back on his Twitter feed that last few days. Though maybe some, since he is still under contract to ESPN.
https://twitter.com/BillSimmons
https://twitter.com/BillSimmons
ernieshore said:
nattysez said:
Like, Mortal Kombat fatality crushed. Good to have Twitter Bill back. Still missing the podcast though...
As someone who was very sick of Simmons and just started following him again after he left ESPN. His Twitter feeds been great lately.
If I had to guess, he is slowly testing how far he can go. None of these tweets are as confrontational as calling Goodell a liar, and in fact, he's letting others do the heavy lifting by linking to other people's coverage of the scandal with editorializing "great article" or "fair coverage". The furthest he's pushed it are the tweets obliquely criticizing Mort for never walking back the first tweet. Bill is clearly not free of the tether yet, or he'd be going after Vincent, Goodell, etc. as well as ESPN with a bit more vitriol.
I would say Olbermann but I wouldn't trust his ego. I could envision something similar to the 30-40 minute take he did on his journey to ESPN before some Wes Morris (I think?) podcast where it was essentially a soliloquy. That was very off the cuff with a tiny bit of structure but was a fantastic listen.
Kliq said:
Why would he need to do it with anyone? Isn't the beauty of podcasting that anyone can record one and put it online for the world to hear? It isn't like radio or TV where you have to have access to an outlet. Given Simmons' social media following, all he'd have to do would be to upload it to itunes or whatever, then tweet the link. Instant audience of millions, and no doubt the Deadspins of the world would have it on the front page within an hour or two, if not faster.
I wouldn't get your hopes up, I'd be willing to bet there is some kind of clause in his separation agreement that states he can't go into detail or crap on them.Kliq said:
Plus, I don't think he's going to go absolutely nuclear on them either, yeah he's pissed, but they both benefited greatly from his employment there.
Whatever language might be in his contract, who knows, there may be no document but we have no idea what he may or may not have signed.luckiestman said:
As I said before, I doubt he goes scorched earth on ESPN.