Bill Simmons, trending.

Dear God! That ought to be on loop in Hades.

 

What I care about.

Is the Bill Simmons Podcast any good?

Yes. It's still an automatic download. Whether I'll listen to it or not depends on the subject and the guests. Cousin Sal, sure. House, yes. Chris Ryan... yeah, okay. Rusillo, most definitely as they have incredible chemistry. I don't read anything on The Ringer outside of the NFL season. Only care about the podcasts.

Simmons revolutionized the industry. He was the only reason people read Page 2. Formed Grantland, was on NBA Countdown for a couple of years and then left to go out on his own. Forms the Ringer and then sells it for more money than some Central American nations' GDP.

Sure, he failed on HBO -- hosting TV isn't his medium. His first podcasts were awful but he got better and camped out early in the medium that is now the present and the future of sports content consumption. Every day when it's not raining, snowing or cold, I walk or run 90+ minutes. All podcasts when I walk and music when I run.

I really don't give a damn who Simmons hires. Is the product good? To me, it still is many more times than not.

The real lack of diversity at The Ringer is that everyone writes or sounds with the same perspective. Snarky, everyone hates Trump and the white guys give courtesy laughs and try to feign interest in whatever a female on one of the podcasts has to say.

 

Perfectly said. Every successful place in every industry is going to harbor some resentment from outsiders who believe they were good enough to be hired at The Plain-Dealer, I mean, there. But The Athletic's ever-mysterious caste system (if you're cool enough for Alex & Adam, then you work there, if you're not, then you don't), coupled with the disdain for freelancers--some of whom they used to get off the ground in many markets and then discarded--is infuriating. I don't root against them, it's not fair to the rank-and-filers who will be just as screwed as the rest of us if the site implodes, but the institutional arrogance is disheartening.

As for Simmons, you'd think a guy who constantly cried about how he wasn't allowed to even prove he could sit at the cool kids' table would be more open-minded to giving a wider variety of people a chance. But these are the actions of someone who was born on third base and bitched about how far he had to run to touch home.

 

A bunch of fucking money and still not happy.

 

That was great. Magary's evolution from just another screeching asshole to nuanced dude has been fascinating and, it appears, legitimate.

 

Agreed. That was a beautifully scathing takedown.

 

Simmons doesn't know who to hire, though. He relies on the same rotating group of editors who've worked across the spectrum of the industry and get their buddies gigs. Simmons does the same.

Nothing new there, of course.

 

Wrong, @exmediahack. Ralph Wiley was the only reason anybody ever read Page 2.

 

I guess I didn't much out of Magary's piece. So he hates Simmons. He sounds more whiny about the guy's success -- success that does not affect him in any way. In fact, what Simmons did was probably help keep sportswriting alive another 10-15 years as people try to launch their own Grantland, their own Ringer.

Go look at the beloved "mom-and-pop" small businesses all over this country. Their structure is usually: successful founder, spouse handles the books, spoiled/fuck-up kid to take over, dimwit brother answers the phones. So Simmons has his buddies on the podcasts. I don't plan to listen to his teenage daughter do a show but I bet he wouldn't do this if there wasn't a market for it -- other teenage girls.

Podcasts are ruled by numbers. Downloads. Listeners. Simmons got in early and set up shop. Now everyone else is doing a podcast... and it's too late for nearly all of them. Don't have to like Simmons but we should all acknowledge the guy has been three steps ahead of where the business is. Every few years, he sets up shop a little further out of town and waits for the infrastructure and the people to reach him.

People have finite hours in the day to listen to podcasts. It is HARD to get people to switch once they form their consumption allegiances. Every third-place TV news operation in America is convinced that, with the right anchors or a new set or graphics, that people will leave the #1 or #2 stations. Nope... the 89% of that audience never leaves.

I'm upper 40s... I'm not going to go scouring for new podcasts very often unless the ones I'm listening to no longer fit my needs. When I do, they get about 20 seconds to impress me. If I don't like the host's voice, move on. If the production quality isn't top-shelf, move on. If they don't list the show's topics -- with time stamps to find the topics in the description -- move on.

 

Perhaps -- I think of Wiley as SI, GQ and The Sports Reporters.

 

Oh, I read Simmons. And Wiley.

Hunter S Thompson was awful by then.

 

Simmons did help turn the industry’s page from the Alboms and Lupicas. I’ll long appreciate that.

I liked some of his work. He was funny. Not going to disavow that.