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Bill Simmons' HBO show "Any Given Wednesday" canceled after 4 months

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M

Macho Madness

Member
Bill Simmons' weekly HBO show ending after a little more than four months on the air.

The pay cable outfit announced Friday, on the eve of wall-to-wall election coverage, that it has canceled his young Any Given Wednesday talk show — though the network will remain in business with the popular sports personality and continue to be minority investor in his Bill Simmons Media Group.
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Yikes
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
Sort of surprised considering how dirt cheap it probably was, but the show just never found it's footing. The best parts were the panel interviews, which could have easily just been podcasts.
 
D

Dazzler

Member
wow, what a fall from grace for BS

He should concentrate on writing. His articles are often brilliant, but his podcast and show highlighted his lack of charisma

His podcast is one of the worst ones on Channel 33 in my opinion
 
S

Stabby McSter

Member
i really liked the show, but it needed a lot of work

just revive that Grantland Basketball Hour under a different name and I'll be happy
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
Dazzler said:
wow, what a fall from grace for BS

He should concentrate on writing. His articles are often brilliant, but his podcast and show highlighted his lack of charisma

His podcast is one of the worst ones on Channel 33 in my opinion
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His podcast is incredibly popular and probably makes him a mint.
 
S

see5harp

Member
SOME of the show was alright. If you actually watch the show in full, it really highlights how bad Bill Simmons actually is at being entertaining. The best part about Grantland was the other guys like the TV guys that ended up doing their Game of Thrones stuff and Zach Lowe on the basketball end. Bill Simmons should really just be the guy behind the scenes.
 
T

TangoAlphaLima

Member
Guevara said:
Is this guy a big deal? I feel like I'm constantly hearing about his show (RIP) and his podcast, etc.
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Depends on your definition of "big deal". In the sports world, yeah. Came up as a columnist for ESPN's Page 2 (as The Sports Guy). Later got a podcast, built the ESPN Grantland Network (RIP), was fired from ESPN, then built The Ringer.

Honestly, his writing and podcasting have always been his best content. I never thought he was good on TV, so I doubted this HBO partnership would work out.
 
T

Tallshortman

Member
Simmons is awful on TV/video. He actually got interesting guests and interviews but man is he a bore on TV. His popularity has always been about his writing which I enjoy.
 
F

Fjordson

Member
I like Bill Simmons quite a bit, but he's never been a great fit on TV for whatever reason. There were a few quality episodes, but most of the time it just felt stiff and dull. He's much better writing on The Ringer or on his podcast.

Dazzler said:
wow, what a fall from grace for BS

He should concentrate on writing. His articles are often brilliant, but his podcast and show highlighted his lack of charisma

His podcast is one of the worst ones on Channel 33 in my opinion
Click to expand...
Wait what? His main show? With Cousin Sal and whatnot? It's still great like it's always been. Unless he has a different show on channel 33? I only listen to the main one.
 
E

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
Saw a few clips of this show for the first time recently and I didn't really get what made it interesting. He had Vince Staples of all people on and it was the most boring thing ever.
 
B

Bread

Banned
I absolutely loved the Paul Pierce and Nas interviews. Then there were also terrible ones like with Joe Rogan.

He tried to reach a broad audience but he just doesn't have that appeal. Should have stuck to more conversations with two celebs like the Nas/Durant interview or Gladwell/Cuban. It was cool to see them hang out and talk about things that interested me. The monologues were a waste of time. I just wanted conversation.
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
enzo_gt said:
Saw a few clips of this show for the first time recently and I didn't really get what made it interesting. He had Vince Staples of all people on and it was the most boring thing ever.
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He struggles when trying to push too hard into the pop culture lane, but for the most part I liked the dynamics of when he has multiple guests from different fields on, like Bill Burr and Wayne Gretzky, or DeMaurice Smith and Malcolm Gladwell, which was easily the best content to come out of AGW. He should have just had Malcolm as his co-interviewer on every episode.
 
S

Sanjuro

Member
The show was good. The day and time was stupid.

I lost track of following episodes myself largely because they have been less accessible than say Oliver's program.
 
Q

Quixzlizx

Member
Even at ESPN, his biggest critical successes were behind the scenes as the editor-in-chief of Grantland and the producer of 30 for 30. Maybe now he'll realize he should be the manager, not the talent.
 
C

Chase17

Member
That's too bad.

It had its ups and downs but overall I would say the show was solid.

Curious what he will do from here. Just keep the podcasts website going I suppose
 
S

see5harp

Member
I will give him some credit for The Ringer. I go there occasionally when I want something other than box scores and I've already gone through the normal music blogs.
 
G

gdt

Member
Goddamn that sucks. I really liked it. His interviews were great. I hated the recent addition of a live audience though.
 
G

Guevara

Member
TangoAlphaLima said:
Depends on your definition of "big deal". In the sports world, yeah. Came up as a columnist for ESPN's Page 2 (as The Sports Guy). Later got a podcast, built the ESPN Grantland Network (RIP), was fired from ESPN, then built The Ringer.

Honestly, his writing and podcasting have always been his best content. I never thought he was good on TV, so I doubted this HBO partnership would work out.
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thanks for this
 
G

Glix

Member
Guevara said:
thanks for this
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As far as I know, he was just a regular guy who started blogging about sports and got the page2 gig from his blog. So it was a nice story.

I don't like his writing AT ALL, but I will always love him for grantland. Guy has a good eye for talent.
 
N

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Bill's best was as an editor and a writer.. he's just naturally good in front of a camera.

Compare him to Costas or even Bryant Gumbel and he really suffers in comparison.
 
K

Karl2177

Member
I thought it was too short personally. Like there'd be a good conversation between Gladwell and Cuban, and Simmons would pop in with a different topic or end it as it got interesting.
 
T

TangoAlphaLima

Member
Glix said:
As far as I know, he was just a regular guy who started blogging about sports and got the page2 gig from his blog. So it was a nice story.

I don't like his writing AT ALL, but I will always love him for grantland. Guy has a good eye for talent.
Click to expand...

He had a Boston-based sports column for AOL before he was hired by ESPN. But yeah, he was pretty much just a regular guy before that.
 
V

Vyer

Member
The best part of this show was just basically a video form of the podcast.

So it really didn't bring anything to the table
 
J

J2 Cool

Member
He should just do more podcasts. They were like less fun, condensed podcasts.

He should also go back to writing columns, if he can manage, and try to do some documentaries with HBO. Creating The Ringer was a nice bit of foresight, rather than put all your eggs in some HBO show's basket.
 
C

CopperPuppy

Member
I dropped it in September, I think. There was some interview with Cris Carter and Amy Trask that was fucking hilariously awful.

The show had some good bits here and there, but the shitty stuff was almost comically bad.

Why make a show centered around Simmons as a host that completely avoids the wit and insight that makes his writing enjoyable?
 
M

Merriweather

Member
I like Simmons and thought the show had improved considerably since the debut, but this isn't a surprise.

The whole underdog Boston fan as everyman thing doesn't work when you're constantly reminding the audience of how many titles your teams have won over the past 15 years.
 
W

WesternHeretic

Member
Maybe he can go write book of basketball 2 now.

I need all the juicy inside info of the whole LeBron vs. Golden state, Durant vs. Westbrook, draymond vs. The world, lance stories, Jr Smith stories, Phil Jackson in NY fuckery, just all of the fuckery.
 
D

devilhawk

Member
There wasn't much of a reason for the show to be on HBO. It could easily be a video podcast through The Ringer, youtube, and even HBO Now/Go.

I thought being on Wednesday's was incredibly weird too, especially for HBO.
 
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