He's a big name in the sports world and we're men and we like sports. It's ok if that's not your thing. We won't judge you.
WTF?!?! Bill Simmons & ESPN to Part Ways, signs deal w/ HBO Any Given Wednesday, The Ringer blog
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He's a big name in the sports world and we're men and we like sports. It's ok if that's not your thing. We won't judge you.
Simmons sucks on TV, imo but 30 for 30 is dope and the jalen/jacoby podcast is my shit.
I hate jade steel on air about as much as I dislike Simmons. And that damn basketball book was about as empty a collection of facts and stories as you can get in a text that long. Tons of info, but absolutely no feeling and vested emotion at all for real basketball/sports fan that don't love the Celtics.
I hate jade steel on air about as much as I dislike Simmons. And that damn basketball book was about as empty a collection of facts and stories as you can get in a text that long. Tons of info, but absolutely no feeling and vested emotion at all for real basketball/sports fan that don't love the Celtics.
FTW: I’ll get you out of here on this: As someone who’s had some run-ins with management, what do you think about ESPN and Bill Simmons parting ways?
Dan LeBatard: It was interesting. He’s the most popular sportswriter in America. And ESPN has figured out how to allow anybody to leave. Nobody in the company is too important to ever get the [axe]. Anybody can leave without it harming ESPN. So when you get a situation that America’s most popular sportswriter is given a lot and wants more — whether it’s freedom or money — and on top of that you have a Bill Simmons that, it’s been reported, has issues with management. When you put those three together, ESPN’s going to let somebody go. The rest of us are just hanging onto them.
FTW: If Bill Simmons asked for your advice, what would you say?
Dan LeBatard: Keep being creative and keep being fearless. This is not going to be bad for Bill Simmons. We can get into a discussion of whether ESPN made Bill Simmons or whether Bill Simmons made Bill Simmons. I would argue that it’s probably a little of both. But he’s got an established name where he can do whatever he wants.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/05/dan...pn-feud-simulcast-mike-francesa-ftw-interview
Colin Cowherd and Dan Le Batard Discussed the Ouster of Bill Simmons
http://thebiglead.com/2015/05/15/colin-cowherd-dan-le-batard-bill-simmons/
http://thebiglead.com/2015/05/15/colin-cowherd-dan-le-batard-bill-simmons/
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Bill Simmons Is Officially Done Working at ESPN, but Will Get Paid Through September
The news, first reported by Sports Illustrated and confirmed by The New York Times, means that Simmons will be paid through September, despite not doing any front-facing work for ESPN or Grantland, the Web site he launched for the company.
“We tried to make it feel like it was more than a job these last four years, but right now, it’s still a job and Grantland is still being consumed and judged by the general public (with unusually high standards, too),” he continued. “So keep the quality of your work as high as it’s always been.”
Simmons, a well-known and at times controversial figure within the sports community, is paid about $5 million per year. Writing for VF.com, James Miller reported that Simmons was incensed by the fact that ESPN hadn’t given him any new hires at Grantland since May of last year, that ESPN president John Skipper’s staff was bad-mouthing him, and that other executives seemed to be trying to diminish his public role in the company’s press and folklore.
The network’s coverage of the N.B.A. also became a sore spot for Simmons, who demanded more time for halftime coverage, among other issues.
Simmons also repeatedly lashed out at N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell, at one point saying the commissioner—who had signed a massive TV-rights deal with ESPN—“lacked testicular fortitude” in his treatment of Tom Brady and the Deflategate scandal.
“You almost have to admire Simmons’s own qualities in that department in doing so,” Miller wrote in a follow-up piece for VF.com. “Behold, a guy with so many options for future employment that he didn’t think twice about committing professional hara-kiri.”
“Work situations are rarely going to be perfect and you can’t allow it to affect what you’re doing,” Simmons wrote in his e-mail to Grantland staff. “The best way to ‘respond’ right now is to keep putting out a great site.” How Simmons himself ends up responding, both in terms of where he works next, and what he says about ESPN, remains to be seen.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/bill-simmons-espn-contract-done-working
We’ve known for a week and some change that ESPN was not renewing its contract with sports journalist Bill Simmons, but it’s now clear that Simmons will not publish any work or appear on any television programs or podcasts for the duration of his contract.
The news, first reported by Sports Illustrated and confirmed by The New York Times, means that Simmons will be paid through September, despite not doing any front-facing work for ESPN or Grantland, the Web site he launched for the company.
Simmons confirmed that he would no longer be contributing to Grantland in an e-mail sent to staff. “Wanted to tell you that it looks like I am done being involved with Grantland,” he wrote. “Can’t say much here for obvious reasons, at least for now—I know you understand. In the short-term—don’t let this bullshit affect you. Just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s a job.”
“We tried to make it feel like it was more than a job these last four years, but right now, it’s still a job and Grantland is still being consumed and judged by the general public (with unusually high standards, too),” he continued. “So keep the quality of your work as high as it’s always been.”
Simmons, a well-known and at times controversial figure within the sports community, is paid about $5 million per year. Writing for VF.com, James Miller reported that Simmons was incensed by the fact that ESPN hadn’t given him any new hires at Grantland since May of last year, that ESPN president John Skipper’s staff was bad-mouthing him, and that other executives seemed to be trying to diminish his public role in the company’s press and folklore.
The network’s coverage of the N.B.A. also became a sore spot for Simmons, who demanded more time for halftime coverage, among other issues.
Simmons also repeatedly lashed out at N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell, at one point saying the commissioner—who had signed a massive TV-rights deal with ESPN—“lacked testicular fortitude” in his treatment of Tom Brady and the Deflategate scandal.
“You almost have to admire Simmons’s own qualities in that department in doing so,” Miller wrote in a follow-up piece for VF.com. “Behold, a guy with so many options for future employment that he didn’t think twice about committing professional hara-kiri.”
“Work situations are rarely going to be perfect and you can’t allow it to affect what you’re doing,” Simmons wrote in his e-mail to Grantland staff. “The best way to ‘respond’ right now is to keep putting out a great site.” How Simmons himself ends up responding, both in terms of where he works next, and what he says about ESPN, remains to be seen.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/bill-simmons-espn-contract-done-working
Simmons Will Be Missed at ESPN
On Friday, SI.com's Richard Deitsch confirmed what many had already suspected: Bill Simmons, taken out into the public square and executed by ESPN 10 days ago, will no longer have his work appear on any of the network's platforms. His contract runs until September, and he'll get paid, but his byline has appeared on ESPN for the last time. I wonder how long his name will continue to appear next to Grantland's on the ESPN homepage. I figure it will start seeming weird if it's still there by Tuesday or Wednesday.
Much of the palace intrigue has revolved around the usual Bill Simmons/ESPN corporate battles, Bristol reportedly being fed up with the typical Simmons drama and deciding he's not worth all the trouble. And as fascinating as that can be sometimes -- and as good for the public personas of both ESPN and Simmons those decade-long fights tended to be -- I'm less interested in those today. (Off the record dishes from PR folks are far more the purview of Deitsch and the gang.) I think it's important to take a second to reflect on the fact that Bill Simmons isn't going to be on ESPN anymore. It's sort of amazing.
In their book Those Guys Have All The Fun -- which I've always found a misleading title; it sounds like a book about the '90s Cowboys, not about a bunch of white Connecticut dorks in committee meetings -- authors Jim Miller and Tom Shales make a solid argument that Simmons might have been the most important ESPN personality of the last decade. I can't speak to the internal politics over there, but I find that point incredibly compelling. He might not be the one who made the network the most money, or brought in the most viewers, or even did the best work, but he was the one who mattered the most.
(Full Disclosure: As the founder of Deadspin, I obviously have a long history with Simmons. It was mostly positive and friendly until a few years ago, when we stopped corresponding over a disagreement. I won't get into the details of the fundamental conflict except to say that the issue boiled down to Simmons being wrong, and me being right.)
From the minute Simmons showed up on Page 2 in 2001, ESPN just felt a little different. Page 2 had more challenging, edgier, smarter writers -- Ralph Wiley and David Halberstam wrote for that site, for crying out loud -- but Simmons really was the first who made you think, "Shit... anyone can do this." That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but it isn't; the notion that the world of sportswriting was available to you and me, and everybody else, was an entire foreign one on a national level before Simmons. His columns were compulsively readable -- I used to print them out for smoke breaks at my hospital job back then -- but most important, they felt accessible. Every sports column before Simmons was part reporter, part bouncer; we'll tell you what happened, but from behind this rope line, and you stay where you are. Simmons invited you in. It's easy to mock the "J-Bug and Stoner go to Vegas" tone, and certainly Simmons' core constituency may have been a bit too much of a bro-dog vibe for my tastes. But let's not miss the forest here. Before Simmons, what was valued in sportswriting was Mitch Albom and Mike Lupica explaining to us how much of an asshole every athlete was, lecturing us on how sports stink now and everything was better when they were 13 years old, emanating smarm out of every pore. No one seemed to be enjoying writing about sports. Simmons loved writing about sports, and you could tell.
It sounds simple, but it really was a revolutionary concept. "Oh, you can actually like sports and still write about them? We didn't know that was legal." For all the retconning about Why We Liked Bill Simmons, and the (sort of fair) argument that Simmons never quite evolved as a writer -- he never had his Dylan Goes Electric moment; he always made sure to play the hits -- this is the fundamental success story of Simmons career. He made you want to stop dicking around and just get to work, dammit. The number of people who are writing about sports now because Simmons wouldn't take no for answer from ESPN, or anyone, 14 years ago is immeasurable. As I wrote last week, Simmons spent 14 years typing into his computer and ended up one of the most powerful media figures in the country; he's an astronaut. We can niggle over the details and poke at him all we want, but Simmons made his own way and paved the way for countless others.
And of course it wasn't just his writing. Take a step back for a second and think about the best things ESPN has done over the last, oh, five years. How many of them are Simmons-related? Grantland. 30 for 30. The vast spectrum of podcasts. Simmons didn't personally author most of these things, but he used his influence to put smart people in charge and stayed out of their way. I mean, ESPN last year paid a writer to write 4,300 words on Shane Carruth, the ultra-indie weirdo auteur of Primer and Upstream Color. Simmons created a safe space for weirdos at ESPN; he might not have never gone Dylan Electric, but he created a place for others to gleefully do so.
I even enjoyed Simmons' brief time on ESPN's NBA pregame and postgame shows. He isn't a natural on television -- which is something we used to credit people for -- but the fact that he seemed so out of place gave the show a tension and spark that it hasn't had before or since. Whatever your thoughts about the 2013 NBA draft kerfuffle between Simmons and Doc Rivers, you can't argue it wasn't compelling television.
And now Simmons is gone, and you can't help but worry. Not to get all Mad Men on you, but the whole Bristol/Grantland dynamic feels a lot like McCann Erickson and Sterling Cooper: The tiny boutique producing high quality, small-scale work suddenly looks, to the massive behemoth who owns it, as a wild-card it needs to get under more control. It's no wonder that many in Bristol were supposedly "cheering" when Simmons got the ax last week; they saw a rogue employee attempting to challenge the Borg. But for those who worked with him at Grantland -- for those he protected from the Borg's influence -- he was the perfect boss.
Is there a place at ESPN for brilliant writers and editors like Molly Lambert, and Mark Lisanti, and Rembert Browne, and many of the other gaggle of weirdos left in Simmons' wake? Would they have ever been there in the first place without Simmons? ESPN says it's staying committed to Grantland, and there is no mass exodus coming. (Simmons himself told his now-former staffers just to keep producing great work.) But corporations are corporations are corporations. Simmons did protect Grantland from Bristol. Who does that now?
The parlor game of What Simmons Does Next is a fascinating one, but that almost doesn't matter. What Simmons was able to pull off from within ESPN -- how he changed that company, via force of laptop -- is almost more impressive than anything he might do in the future with absolute autonomy. You could look at the junk that ESPN produces, from Skip Bayless to Stephen A. Smith to Colin Cowherd to pretty much everything involving its association with the NFL, and you could almost tolerate it, because there was such good elsewhere: A place that could bankroll the Mad Men Power Rankings or Zach Lowe or Jonah Keri or Errol Morris Week or "June 17, 1994" couldn't possibly be all bad. There is still much greatness at ESPN; they're obviously not going anywhere, and Bill Simmons wasn't the only smart person hiring other smart people over there. But the place does feel a little less weird already. It feels a little less daring, a little less scrappy, a little more Under Control.
Simmons was hardly some grand revolutionary, storming the castle and fighting the corporate system. He will go on to another job where he will make millions, and maybe this new venture will succeed, and maybe it won't. But what he pulled off at ESPN is his signature, most astonishing accomplishment. I hope, for all our sakes, it sticks. After more than a decade of arm wrestling with Simmons, ESPN's house must finally seem a little bit more in order now. But it already does feel a little different with him gone. I wonder if it always will.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/articl...-renewing-contract-grantland-30-for-30-legacy
On Friday, SI.com's Richard Deitsch confirmed what many had already suspected: Bill Simmons, taken out into the public square and executed by ESPN 10 days ago, will no longer have his work appear on any of the network's platforms. His contract runs until September, and he'll get paid, but his byline has appeared on ESPN for the last time. I wonder how long his name will continue to appear next to Grantland's on the ESPN homepage. I figure it will start seeming weird if it's still there by Tuesday or Wednesday.
Much of the palace intrigue has revolved around the usual Bill Simmons/ESPN corporate battles, Bristol reportedly being fed up with the typical Simmons drama and deciding he's not worth all the trouble. And as fascinating as that can be sometimes -- and as good for the public personas of both ESPN and Simmons those decade-long fights tended to be -- I'm less interested in those today. (Off the record dishes from PR folks are far more the purview of Deitsch and the gang.) I think it's important to take a second to reflect on the fact that Bill Simmons isn't going to be on ESPN anymore. It's sort of amazing.
In their book Those Guys Have All The Fun -- which I've always found a misleading title; it sounds like a book about the '90s Cowboys, not about a bunch of white Connecticut dorks in committee meetings -- authors Jim Miller and Tom Shales make a solid argument that Simmons might have been the most important ESPN personality of the last decade. I can't speak to the internal politics over there, but I find that point incredibly compelling. He might not be the one who made the network the most money, or brought in the most viewers, or even did the best work, but he was the one who mattered the most.
(Full Disclosure: As the founder of Deadspin, I obviously have a long history with Simmons. It was mostly positive and friendly until a few years ago, when we stopped corresponding over a disagreement. I won't get into the details of the fundamental conflict except to say that the issue boiled down to Simmons being wrong, and me being right.)
From the minute Simmons showed up on Page 2 in 2001, ESPN just felt a little different. Page 2 had more challenging, edgier, smarter writers -- Ralph Wiley and David Halberstam wrote for that site, for crying out loud -- but Simmons really was the first who made you think, "Shit... anyone can do this." That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but it isn't; the notion that the world of sportswriting was available to you and me, and everybody else, was an entire foreign one on a national level before Simmons. His columns were compulsively readable -- I used to print them out for smoke breaks at my hospital job back then -- but most important, they felt accessible. Every sports column before Simmons was part reporter, part bouncer; we'll tell you what happened, but from behind this rope line, and you stay where you are. Simmons invited you in. It's easy to mock the "J-Bug and Stoner go to Vegas" tone, and certainly Simmons' core constituency may have been a bit too much of a bro-dog vibe for my tastes. But let's not miss the forest here. Before Simmons, what was valued in sportswriting was Mitch Albom and Mike Lupica explaining to us how much of an asshole every athlete was, lecturing us on how sports stink now and everything was better when they were 13 years old, emanating smarm out of every pore. No one seemed to be enjoying writing about sports. Simmons loved writing about sports, and you could tell.
It sounds simple, but it really was a revolutionary concept. "Oh, you can actually like sports and still write about them? We didn't know that was legal." For all the retconning about Why We Liked Bill Simmons, and the (sort of fair) argument that Simmons never quite evolved as a writer -- he never had his Dylan Goes Electric moment; he always made sure to play the hits -- this is the fundamental success story of Simmons career. He made you want to stop dicking around and just get to work, dammit. The number of people who are writing about sports now because Simmons wouldn't take no for answer from ESPN, or anyone, 14 years ago is immeasurable. As I wrote last week, Simmons spent 14 years typing into his computer and ended up one of the most powerful media figures in the country; he's an astronaut. We can niggle over the details and poke at him all we want, but Simmons made his own way and paved the way for countless others.
And of course it wasn't just his writing. Take a step back for a second and think about the best things ESPN has done over the last, oh, five years. How many of them are Simmons-related? Grantland. 30 for 30. The vast spectrum of podcasts. Simmons didn't personally author most of these things, but he used his influence to put smart people in charge and stayed out of their way. I mean, ESPN last year paid a writer to write 4,300 words on Shane Carruth, the ultra-indie weirdo auteur of Primer and Upstream Color. Simmons created a safe space for weirdos at ESPN; he might not have never gone Dylan Electric, but he created a place for others to gleefully do so.
I even enjoyed Simmons' brief time on ESPN's NBA pregame and postgame shows. He isn't a natural on television -- which is something we used to credit people for -- but the fact that he seemed so out of place gave the show a tension and spark that it hasn't had before or since. Whatever your thoughts about the 2013 NBA draft kerfuffle between Simmons and Doc Rivers, you can't argue it wasn't compelling television.
And now Simmons is gone, and you can't help but worry. Not to get all Mad Men on you, but the whole Bristol/Grantland dynamic feels a lot like McCann Erickson and Sterling Cooper: The tiny boutique producing high quality, small-scale work suddenly looks, to the massive behemoth who owns it, as a wild-card it needs to get under more control. It's no wonder that many in Bristol were supposedly "cheering" when Simmons got the ax last week; they saw a rogue employee attempting to challenge the Borg. But for those who worked with him at Grantland -- for those he protected from the Borg's influence -- he was the perfect boss.
Is there a place at ESPN for brilliant writers and editors like Molly Lambert, and Mark Lisanti, and Rembert Browne, and many of the other gaggle of weirdos left in Simmons' wake? Would they have ever been there in the first place without Simmons? ESPN says it's staying committed to Grantland, and there is no mass exodus coming. (Simmons himself told his now-former staffers just to keep producing great work.) But corporations are corporations are corporations. Simmons did protect Grantland from Bristol. Who does that now?
The parlor game of What Simmons Does Next is a fascinating one, but that almost doesn't matter. What Simmons was able to pull off from within ESPN -- how he changed that company, via force of laptop -- is almost more impressive than anything he might do in the future with absolute autonomy. You could look at the junk that ESPN produces, from Skip Bayless to Stephen A. Smith to Colin Cowherd to pretty much everything involving its association with the NFL, and you could almost tolerate it, because there was such good elsewhere: A place that could bankroll the Mad Men Power Rankings or Zach Lowe or Jonah Keri or Errol Morris Week or "June 17, 1994" couldn't possibly be all bad. There is still much greatness at ESPN; they're obviously not going anywhere, and Bill Simmons wasn't the only smart person hiring other smart people over there. But the place does feel a little less weird already. It feels a little less daring, a little less scrappy, a little more Under Control.
Simmons was hardly some grand revolutionary, storming the castle and fighting the corporate system. He will go on to another job where he will make millions, and maybe this new venture will succeed, and maybe it won't. But what he pulled off at ESPN is his signature, most astonishing accomplishment. I hope, for all our sakes, it sticks. After more than a decade of arm wrestling with Simmons, ESPN's house must finally seem a little bit more in order now. But it already does feel a little different with him gone. I wonder if it always will.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/articl...-renewing-contract-grantland-30-for-30-legacy
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Wanted to say a couple of things about <a href="https://twitter.com/BillSimmons">@BillSimmons</a>. <a href="http://t.co/PebqEzfPKp">pic.twitter.com/PebqEzfPKp</a></p>— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status/599825263673745408">May 17, 2015</a></blockquote>
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With Bidding War Between Fox and Turner Underway, It’s Good to Be Bill Simmons
Bill Simmons is probably the best living example of what so many who enter sports media hope to achieve:
– Owner of a loyal, massive audience
– A unique writing style emulated by others in the business
– Author of two best-selling books
– Comedy writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live
– Host of a must-listen-to podcast featuring top athletes, celebrities and even the president
– Editor-in-Chief of his own website (Grantland) with the backing of the most powerful broadcast entity on the planet (ESPN)
– Co-host of an NBA studio show
Add it all up, and Simmons was leading a dream life. “Was” because as you may have heard, Simmons was basically fired by ESPN this week after his contract—which isn’t up for four months—wasn’t going to be renewed. The decision was made not because Simmons wasn’t producing at a high level (listeners downloaded episodes of his BS Report 32 million times in 2013, for example) but rather due to a struggle—which has been acrimonious for years—over editorial freedom.
So how did Simmons become a juggernaut? At first, it was his tremendous, unique, genuine columns, which basically perfected marrying an average fan’s perspective with pop culture and oftentimes, gambling aspects (the latter being taboo among most sportswriters for whatever reason despite the huge factor it plays—and this includes fantasy– over any televised event). Know this: A pre-ESPN Simmons would rail against many ESPN personalities on a daily basis. A pre-ESPN Simmons would call Roger Goodell a liar and not give it a second thought (Simmons was suspended for making the accusation, although it was his simultaneous challenge to management daring them to suspend him is what earned him those three weeks). Instead, the Sports Guy was forced to tow the corporate line since signing with the Worldwide Leader back in 2002. And as his power and influence (and ego) grew, Simmons continually tested his bosses’ patience and tolerance. Fast forward to this week, when the big boss and once his biggest advocate—John Skipper—clearly had enough by publicly divorcing Simmons seemingly without warning.
So what are Bill’s options moving forward? That’s where things get interesting, as a bidding war between ESPN’s top competitors will likely result in Simmons at least doubling his currently (reported) $5 million annual salary. The first instinct is to say Fox Sports has the advantage given its build-out of Fox Sports 1 & 2, owns rights to the NFL and Major League Baseball, and has Rupert Murdoch’s bottomless pockets to make it happen. But the money here is on Turner Sports, which purchased traffic-giant Bleacher Report not long ago, has attractive platforms via HBO Sports, CNN, TNT and TBS. The last two networks will be particularly enticing to Simmons, who may love the Red Sox (his first book was about their improbable run to the ’04 Championship in breaking the curse), worship the Pats, but is an NBA guy first and foremost (the subject of his second book). As far as money, at last check Time Warner (Turner is a subsidiary) has a few dollars in the bank as well, with $30 billion in annual revenue.
The third option, of course, is something Simmons wondered aloud about in a classic piece from 2011 when drawing a parallel of his own potential business model with the excessive greed and mindset of the average NFL owner.
Take a deep breath, suspend all disbelief and walk through the following hypothetical (and admittedly ridiculous) scenario with me …
The columns ends with Simmons alienating all of his employees and being so money-obsessed he steamrolls anyone who gets in his way. Now…does he really want to go through all the backend business headaches that go along with launching one’s own site? Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan (now retired) and Glenn Beck all did it with varying degrees of success. But Grantland.com–Simmons’ creation–is actually losing money (ESPN says it will stand by the venture) and could prove as a preview of what could happen if Simmons started his own media company. So if he’s smart, he’ll forego the risk and simply join Charles Barkley on the set of TNT’s NBA studio show (despite being hopelessly average as a TV analyst) while hosting a version of his podcast on HBO and writing columns for Bleacher Report (#4 in traffic for sports media online)…while making at least $10 million.
Not a bad gig if you can get it.
Bill Simmons went from a struggling writer to one of the biggest names in media across multiple platforms. With success came more money, more self-importance and ultimately a bad breakup with the Worldwide Leader in Sports. But at just 45, his options are not only numerous, but extremely lucrative.
Wherever he goes, one thing is for certain: Everything Simmons has been holding back about his now-former employer is going to come out with a highly-entertaining vengeance. Get your popcorn ready.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/with...-turner-underway-its-good-to-be-bill-simmons/
Bill Simmons is probably the best living example of what so many who enter sports media hope to achieve:
– Owner of a loyal, massive audience
– A unique writing style emulated by others in the business
– Author of two best-selling books
– Comedy writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live
– Host of a must-listen-to podcast featuring top athletes, celebrities and even the president
– Editor-in-Chief of his own website (Grantland) with the backing of the most powerful broadcast entity on the planet (ESPN)
– Co-host of an NBA studio show
Add it all up, and Simmons was leading a dream life. “Was” because as you may have heard, Simmons was basically fired by ESPN this week after his contract—which isn’t up for four months—wasn’t going to be renewed. The decision was made not because Simmons wasn’t producing at a high level (listeners downloaded episodes of his BS Report 32 million times in 2013, for example) but rather due to a struggle—which has been acrimonious for years—over editorial freedom.
So how did Simmons become a juggernaut? At first, it was his tremendous, unique, genuine columns, which basically perfected marrying an average fan’s perspective with pop culture and oftentimes, gambling aspects (the latter being taboo among most sportswriters for whatever reason despite the huge factor it plays—and this includes fantasy– over any televised event). Know this: A pre-ESPN Simmons would rail against many ESPN personalities on a daily basis. A pre-ESPN Simmons would call Roger Goodell a liar and not give it a second thought (Simmons was suspended for making the accusation, although it was his simultaneous challenge to management daring them to suspend him is what earned him those three weeks). Instead, the Sports Guy was forced to tow the corporate line since signing with the Worldwide Leader back in 2002. And as his power and influence (and ego) grew, Simmons continually tested his bosses’ patience and tolerance. Fast forward to this week, when the big boss and once his biggest advocate—John Skipper—clearly had enough by publicly divorcing Simmons seemingly without warning.
So what are Bill’s options moving forward? That’s where things get interesting, as a bidding war between ESPN’s top competitors will likely result in Simmons at least doubling his currently (reported) $5 million annual salary. The first instinct is to say Fox Sports has the advantage given its build-out of Fox Sports 1 & 2, owns rights to the NFL and Major League Baseball, and has Rupert Murdoch’s bottomless pockets to make it happen. But the money here is on Turner Sports, which purchased traffic-giant Bleacher Report not long ago, has attractive platforms via HBO Sports, CNN, TNT and TBS. The last two networks will be particularly enticing to Simmons, who may love the Red Sox (his first book was about their improbable run to the ’04 Championship in breaking the curse), worship the Pats, but is an NBA guy first and foremost (the subject of his second book). As far as money, at last check Time Warner (Turner is a subsidiary) has a few dollars in the bank as well, with $30 billion in annual revenue.
The third option, of course, is something Simmons wondered aloud about in a classic piece from 2011 when drawing a parallel of his own potential business model with the excessive greed and mindset of the average NFL owner.
Take a deep breath, suspend all disbelief and walk through the following hypothetical (and admittedly ridiculous) scenario with me …
It’s December 2006.
I decide to leave ESPN, start my own blog and charge $10 per year for anyone to read my column. Just for fun — again, it’s hypothetical! — let’s say one million readers sign up, guaranteeing me $10 million for that first year (2007). And let’s say I sign advertising deals with three sponsors for another $2 million apiece, raising my total haul to $16 million for Year 1. I spend the next 12 months writing and pinching myself for my good fortune. Life is good.
Fast-forward to December 2007. I just learned something about myself. I don’t like it. I know it’s wrong. I can’t shake it. I can’t deny it. See, I really, really like money. Even if I never imagined making $16 million in my lifetime, much less for a single year, I now find myself smitten by those dollar signs. How much more can I make? How high can this go? Someday, I want my financial adviser to cackle and say, “Good Lord, I don’t even know what to do with all this cash flow.” That’s what I want.
I decide to leave ESPN, start my own blog and charge $10 per year for anyone to read my column. Just for fun — again, it’s hypothetical! — let’s say one million readers sign up, guaranteeing me $10 million for that first year (2007). And let’s say I sign advertising deals with three sponsors for another $2 million apiece, raising my total haul to $16 million for Year 1. I spend the next 12 months writing and pinching myself for my good fortune. Life is good.
Fast-forward to December 2007. I just learned something about myself. I don’t like it. I know it’s wrong. I can’t shake it. I can’t deny it. See, I really, really like money. Even if I never imagined making $16 million in my lifetime, much less for a single year, I now find myself smitten by those dollar signs. How much more can I make? How high can this go? Someday, I want my financial adviser to cackle and say, “Good Lord, I don’t even know what to do with all this cash flow.” That’s what I want.
The columns ends with Simmons alienating all of his employees and being so money-obsessed he steamrolls anyone who gets in his way. Now…does he really want to go through all the backend business headaches that go along with launching one’s own site? Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan (now retired) and Glenn Beck all did it with varying degrees of success. But Grantland.com–Simmons’ creation–is actually losing money (ESPN says it will stand by the venture) and could prove as a preview of what could happen if Simmons started his own media company. So if he’s smart, he’ll forego the risk and simply join Charles Barkley on the set of TNT’s NBA studio show (despite being hopelessly average as a TV analyst) while hosting a version of his podcast on HBO and writing columns for Bleacher Report (#4 in traffic for sports media online)…while making at least $10 million.
Not a bad gig if you can get it.
Bill Simmons went from a struggling writer to one of the biggest names in media across multiple platforms. With success came more money, more self-importance and ultimately a bad breakup with the Worldwide Leader in Sports. But at just 45, his options are not only numerous, but extremely lucrative.
Wherever he goes, one thing is for certain: Everything Simmons has been holding back about his now-former employer is going to come out with a highly-entertaining vengeance. Get your popcorn ready.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/with...-turner-underway-its-good-to-be-bill-simmons/
Adam Carolla Says Bill Simmons Will Talk a Bunch of [Poop] When His ESPN Contract Ends
On his podcast today, Adam Carolla began by discussing his recent dinner with Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, Jimmy Kimmel, their agent James “Babydoll” Dixon — who also reps Jon Stewart — and Daniel from the Man Show. Whenever this group goes out with Dixon, it becomes a big game to see how high they can run up the tab for him (I’ve heard Cousin Sal talk about this a couple times before).
On this occasion, Carolla said they were ordering $200+ bottles of pink champagne for strangers at neighboring tables, in addition to who-knows-what they were consuming themselves. Apparently another aspect of the competition is to estimate what the final bill will be. Carolla said Simmons came the closest, calibrating his guess within $4 of the final $2,083 tab.
As an aside in that anecdote, Carolla said: “By the way, he says whenever his contract is up with ESPN, he’s gonna come on this show and talk a bunch of shit — so I think in September we can look forward to that.”
Those with a vested interest in TBL’s traffic meter really wish that Simmons’ contract was set to expire in August when there’s no football — or much of anything else — to pad our stats.
UPDATE: Carolla clarified these remarks.
Last week, Adam Carolla said that when Bill Simmons’ ESPN contract ends, the Sports Guy would go on his podcast and talk a bunch of shit (though he didn’t expressly say that would be about ESPN, it was implied). Today, Carolla clarified that remark.
“I want to do a quick correction,” Carolla said today. “I said on Friday’s show that I had dinner with Bill Simmons and he was gonna come on and talk a bunch of shit about ESPN. Just to be clear, because I’d had a couple of drinks, he said he was gonna come on in September after his ESPN contract was up, and we’re gonna talk about a lot of shit — I don’t want people to think he’s gonna foul-mouth ESPN.”
Glad/sad that’s settled!
On his podcast today, Adam Carolla began by discussing his recent dinner with Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, Jimmy Kimmel, their agent James “Babydoll” Dixon — who also reps Jon Stewart — and Daniel from the Man Show. Whenever this group goes out with Dixon, it becomes a big game to see how high they can run up the tab for him (I’ve heard Cousin Sal talk about this a couple times before).
On this occasion, Carolla said they were ordering $200+ bottles of pink champagne for strangers at neighboring tables, in addition to who-knows-what they were consuming themselves. Apparently another aspect of the competition is to estimate what the final bill will be. Carolla said Simmons came the closest, calibrating his guess within $4 of the final $2,083 tab.
As an aside in that anecdote, Carolla said: “By the way, he says whenever his contract is up with ESPN, he’s gonna come on this show and talk a bunch of shit — so I think in September we can look forward to that.”
Those with a vested interest in TBL’s traffic meter really wish that Simmons’ contract was set to expire in August when there’s no football — or much of anything else — to pad our stats.
UPDATE: Carolla clarified these remarks.
Last week, Adam Carolla said that when Bill Simmons’ ESPN contract ends, the Sports Guy would go on his podcast and talk a bunch of shit (though he didn’t expressly say that would be about ESPN, it was implied). Today, Carolla clarified that remark.
“I want to do a quick correction,” Carolla said today. “I said on Friday’s show that I had dinner with Bill Simmons and he was gonna come on and talk a bunch of shit about ESPN. Just to be clear, because I’d had a couple of drinks, he said he was gonna come on in September after his ESPN contract was up, and we’re gonna talk about a lot of shit — I don’t want people to think he’s gonna foul-mouth ESPN.”
Glad/sad that’s settled!
Bill Simmons Was the Subject of a Graduate Business School Case Study at Northwestern
The commotion from last September involving Bill Simmons, ESPN, and Roger Goodell was made into a case study at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Along with a writer named Charlotte Snyder, associate professor Brayden King authored the case, and he led a discussion on it with two of his graduate classes this week. King, who has been a professor at Northwestern’s graduate business school for seven years after receiving a PHD in sociology at Arizona, is teaching a course entitled Power in Organizations: Sources, Strategies, and Skills.
The class, which I observed on Tuesday night, is generally about attaining influence in companies, navigating politics, and using your influence to improve organizations. Students had a diverse array of backgrounds, including corporate finance, healthcare operations, auditing, financial services, insurance, and dental equipment manufacturing.
The Simmons case was the students’ first one in the course. Due to licensing issues, we’re not able to publish very much of its text here, but it was very thoroughly researched. The 14-page study walked through the background of how Simmons arrived at and rose through the various platforms at ESPN, detailed the past issues Simmons has had with management and his podcast remarks, and talked about how Roger Goodell came to power. The case also summarized the Ray Rice incident, and discussed past “conflicts of interest resulting from financial partnerships” that had impacted ESPN’s coverage of the NFL.
The study, which was presented matter-of-factly and without editorialization, concluded by asking the following discussion questions:
Would Simmons renew his contract with ESPN in 2015? Was ESPN doing justice to its twin missions of journalistic excellence and entertainment? Would losing Simmons hurt ESPN’s brand? Would Goodell be forced to resign? And in light of recent lawsuits regarding drugs and violence endured and perpetrated by professional football players both on and off the field, was the NFL really too big to fail?
Much of the classroom discussion centered on the first and third questions. About two-thirds of the students were familiar with Simmons’ work. Some were regular Grantland readers, a few listen to all of his podcasts, and another loved the 30 for 30 series. Even those who were previously unaware of Simmons picked up on the dynamics of the situation pretty intuitively just based on having read the case.
Students inferred that Simmons was probably disciplined by ESPN more for his comments about his bosses rather than Goodell. When discussion turned to Simmons’ contract negotiations, there was the consensus that, while he adds tremendous value with both his vision and personality, of course ESPN would survive without him. Most thought that Simmons would also be more or less fine and continue to have a prominent voice in sports media if he were to leave, though they did feel his relevance may wane a bit without ESPN’s monolithic distribution.
One student aptly brought up a big wild card: Would ESPN be sensitive and fearful as to how Simmons would wield his influence towards negativity should he leave the Mothership? All in all, it was very interesting for me to see how a variety of professionals far outside the realm of sports media viewed this story.
***
Image (1) bill-simmons.jpg for post 94799
Switching gears from what that was discussed in the Northwestern case, it’s worth parsing through the various things that Simmons has said (or have been said about him) since the suspension.
At the end of a late-October podcast with Those Guys Have All the Fun author James Andrew Miller, Simmons asked Miller what he’s working on next, Miller turned the tables, and the audio skipped to Simmons coyly remarking that the past 20ish minutes of their conversation had been cut. MYSTERIOUS.
In February, Dan Patrick asked Simmons if he’s behaving. “Yeah. I’m keeping my head down, doing my work — you know how that goes,” Simmons said. “I’m trying not to say anything. I’m working harder than ever. I’m trying to confine [being provocative] towards sports and pop culture comments. There’s always going to be things that we do that I don’t agree with. I think DeflateGate was a phenomenal test of my internal will — not to say anything when we had a bunch of people going on and talking about a report that turned out to be completely debunked.”
Though Simmons did bash Ray Lewis for his Ballghazi commentary, it’s not as though he went after any of ESPN’s reporters, so that probably does qualify as restraint. In any event, he wasn’t disciplined by ESPN for the tweet about Lewis, or for ones critical of Mike Golic (who had fired the first shot) or Dick Vitale (who was passionately, and wrongly, sticking up for his buddy Jim Boeheim).
“My interest is high in re-signing Bill,” ESPN president John Skipper told SI’s Richard Deitsch in mid-February. “We like Bill. He has done good work for us. We continue to have a good collaboration, and I am anxious to have some discussions with Bill to see if we can continue to do things that work for ESPN. … Every time I have a discussion with Bill I start with: ‘Bill, what do you want to do next?’ I have not had that conversation with him recently but I will tell you that will be how I will start our conversation.”
<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/198774471&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true"></iframe>
n early March, Simmons joined Tony Kornheiser’s radio show, and walked through the background of Grantland. Eventually he got around to discussing traffic, saying they get about 10-12 million pageviews per week, but that they don’t game the system. “In January, I think we had almost 7 million uniques, which means all individual people who come to a site at least once,” he said. “But, there’s ways to chase uniques that we don’t do. Like, you can use Facebook. For instance, let’s say something happens. Let’s say you and I get arrested. Right now, for some false charge. If you put a story up fast enough about that, on Facebook they have this trending thing, and if you have a story quick enough you just get a ton of traffic. There’s ways to cheat it, but we just don’t do it.”
Kornheiser asked if Simmons has run up to resistance to his growth ambitions (he’d just said they’d like to launch more verticals) for Grantland because ESPN’s core business is televising games. “Here’s the thing,” Simmons said. “If you don’t have stuff — whether you call it a boutique site, or taking chances with documentaries, or launching smaller things — then you’re just Starbucks. Then you’re just showing games and SportsCenter, and you don’t really have a soul, I don’t think. I think Skipper gets that. Skipper gets that you have to have a couple of these things, because that’s what gives you layers and character. Once you lose that, and you just care about the games and the rights that you have, that’s when you get in trouble, I think.”
In an interview with Recode’s Peter Kafka (and it’s advisable to read the whole thing) in mid-March, Simmons continued to tacitly lobby ESPN to provide Grantland with more resources to grow:
I just think Grantland’s at a crucial point now where we’re doing the site that we have now really, really well. And that’s been the case now for about 14 months. So now the question is, what does that mean to ESPN? I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s a me decision — it’s what does ESPN want from this site? Because if they just want it to say the same, it’s going to stagnate a little bit.
Media conversations about Grantland often reach a point where people speculate on whether it’s making money (or, the extent of its losses). While the accounting of that can be quite difficult based on the way ESPN’s properties interact with each other, it was evident in his interview with Kafka that those questions are not lost on Simmons. He hoped for ESPN’s corporate staff to do a better job of monetizing his team’s multimedia output:
I think for what ESPN does as a company — it’s a company that’s built toward selling bigger things. They have deals with a lot of sponsors, and their money is going to gravitate toward bigger properties that ESPN has. The challenge for ESPN and a lot of other companies is trying to figure out how to keep those relationships, and also figuring out how to extend relationships, or create relationships with stuff that’s not Monday Night Football. […]
I do think, as a competitive person, the fact that we don’t have a sponsored studio yet is just perplexing to me. We shoot like 15 hours of TV in there. But I also don’t know anything about ad sales, and it’s probably a much more complicated landscape than I’m giving it credit for. But to me, that’s a no-brainer.
So, reading between the lines, it seems as though Simmons’ contract negotiations will be pegged to not just giving more resources to Grantland, but a concerted effort towards making more money from the work that he and his team are already creating. It’s impossible to fault him as a leader for doing that. Shouldn’t a quality product that is critically acclaimed be making more profits?
While Simmons may have a strong point about monetization of their audio and video, there are various print pieces that they run that will never in a thousand years make back what they cost to create. Their masthead already lists nearly 60 contributors, about a dozen of whom have “editor” in their title. It may be irksome to Simmons that ESPN’s ad sales staff concentrates so much more on fulfilling Monday Night Football inventory, but that’s what the largess of Grantland is subsidized by.
The anti-Simmons faction in ESPN’s old guard is presumably skeptical about his asking for more. How much is enough? Shouldn’t they be driving more traffic with a staff that size? How many more writers should we be expected to send all over the country and the world for vanity projects? And, even if we give him everything he wants now, won’t he still want more later, and still continue to publicly bash our other employees?
From Simmons’ perspective, you could see why he would want to be on a platform where he could say literally whatever he wants, and never have to worry about censorship. One could also understand why he would want to prove the naysayers wrong, and thrive outside the Mothership as Dan Patrick has done. What form that could take — a startup a la Glenn Beck, an existing media outlet, or a segmentation wherein he writes for one place and produces multimedia somewhere else — would be anyone’s guess.
Though there could (almost certainly will?) be bumps in the road along the way, and even if Simmons himself does not feel this way now, it remains difficult to wager against he and Skipper striking a deal. While Simmons could have unconditional freedom of speech elsewhere, he would not be reaching as large of an audience, and it’s very difficult to imagine that anybody would fund something as large as Grantland for him to preside over.
http://thebiglead.com/2015/04/01/bi...e-business-school-case-study-at-northwestern/
The commotion from last September involving Bill Simmons, ESPN, and Roger Goodell was made into a case study at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Along with a writer named Charlotte Snyder, associate professor Brayden King authored the case, and he led a discussion on it with two of his graduate classes this week. King, who has been a professor at Northwestern’s graduate business school for seven years after receiving a PHD in sociology at Arizona, is teaching a course entitled Power in Organizations: Sources, Strategies, and Skills.
The class, which I observed on Tuesday night, is generally about attaining influence in companies, navigating politics, and using your influence to improve organizations. Students had a diverse array of backgrounds, including corporate finance, healthcare operations, auditing, financial services, insurance, and dental equipment manufacturing.
The Simmons case was the students’ first one in the course. Due to licensing issues, we’re not able to publish very much of its text here, but it was very thoroughly researched. The 14-page study walked through the background of how Simmons arrived at and rose through the various platforms at ESPN, detailed the past issues Simmons has had with management and his podcast remarks, and talked about how Roger Goodell came to power. The case also summarized the Ray Rice incident, and discussed past “conflicts of interest resulting from financial partnerships” that had impacted ESPN’s coverage of the NFL.
The study, which was presented matter-of-factly and without editorialization, concluded by asking the following discussion questions:
Would Simmons renew his contract with ESPN in 2015? Was ESPN doing justice to its twin missions of journalistic excellence and entertainment? Would losing Simmons hurt ESPN’s brand? Would Goodell be forced to resign? And in light of recent lawsuits regarding drugs and violence endured and perpetrated by professional football players both on and off the field, was the NFL really too big to fail?
Much of the classroom discussion centered on the first and third questions. About two-thirds of the students were familiar with Simmons’ work. Some were regular Grantland readers, a few listen to all of his podcasts, and another loved the 30 for 30 series. Even those who were previously unaware of Simmons picked up on the dynamics of the situation pretty intuitively just based on having read the case.
Students inferred that Simmons was probably disciplined by ESPN more for his comments about his bosses rather than Goodell. When discussion turned to Simmons’ contract negotiations, there was the consensus that, while he adds tremendous value with both his vision and personality, of course ESPN would survive without him. Most thought that Simmons would also be more or less fine and continue to have a prominent voice in sports media if he were to leave, though they did feel his relevance may wane a bit without ESPN’s monolithic distribution.
One student aptly brought up a big wild card: Would ESPN be sensitive and fearful as to how Simmons would wield his influence towards negativity should he leave the Mothership? All in all, it was very interesting for me to see how a variety of professionals far outside the realm of sports media viewed this story.
***
Image (1) bill-simmons.jpg for post 94799
Switching gears from what that was discussed in the Northwestern case, it’s worth parsing through the various things that Simmons has said (or have been said about him) since the suspension.
At the end of a late-October podcast with Those Guys Have All the Fun author James Andrew Miller, Simmons asked Miller what he’s working on next, Miller turned the tables, and the audio skipped to Simmons coyly remarking that the past 20ish minutes of their conversation had been cut. MYSTERIOUS.
In February, Dan Patrick asked Simmons if he’s behaving. “Yeah. I’m keeping my head down, doing my work — you know how that goes,” Simmons said. “I’m trying not to say anything. I’m working harder than ever. I’m trying to confine [being provocative] towards sports and pop culture comments. There’s always going to be things that we do that I don’t agree with. I think DeflateGate was a phenomenal test of my internal will — not to say anything when we had a bunch of people going on and talking about a report that turned out to be completely debunked.”
Though Simmons did bash Ray Lewis for his Ballghazi commentary, it’s not as though he went after any of ESPN’s reporters, so that probably does qualify as restraint. In any event, he wasn’t disciplined by ESPN for the tweet about Lewis, or for ones critical of Mike Golic (who had fired the first shot) or Dick Vitale (who was passionately, and wrongly, sticking up for his buddy Jim Boeheim).
“My interest is high in re-signing Bill,” ESPN president John Skipper told SI’s Richard Deitsch in mid-February. “We like Bill. He has done good work for us. We continue to have a good collaboration, and I am anxious to have some discussions with Bill to see if we can continue to do things that work for ESPN. … Every time I have a discussion with Bill I start with: ‘Bill, what do you want to do next?’ I have not had that conversation with him recently but I will tell you that will be how I will start our conversation.”
<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/198774471&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true"></iframe>
n early March, Simmons joined Tony Kornheiser’s radio show, and walked through the background of Grantland. Eventually he got around to discussing traffic, saying they get about 10-12 million pageviews per week, but that they don’t game the system. “In January, I think we had almost 7 million uniques, which means all individual people who come to a site at least once,” he said. “But, there’s ways to chase uniques that we don’t do. Like, you can use Facebook. For instance, let’s say something happens. Let’s say you and I get arrested. Right now, for some false charge. If you put a story up fast enough about that, on Facebook they have this trending thing, and if you have a story quick enough you just get a ton of traffic. There’s ways to cheat it, but we just don’t do it.”
Kornheiser asked if Simmons has run up to resistance to his growth ambitions (he’d just said they’d like to launch more verticals) for Grantland because ESPN’s core business is televising games. “Here’s the thing,” Simmons said. “If you don’t have stuff — whether you call it a boutique site, or taking chances with documentaries, or launching smaller things — then you’re just Starbucks. Then you’re just showing games and SportsCenter, and you don’t really have a soul, I don’t think. I think Skipper gets that. Skipper gets that you have to have a couple of these things, because that’s what gives you layers and character. Once you lose that, and you just care about the games and the rights that you have, that’s when you get in trouble, I think.”
In an interview with Recode’s Peter Kafka (and it’s advisable to read the whole thing) in mid-March, Simmons continued to tacitly lobby ESPN to provide Grantland with more resources to grow:
I just think Grantland’s at a crucial point now where we’re doing the site that we have now really, really well. And that’s been the case now for about 14 months. So now the question is, what does that mean to ESPN? I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s a me decision — it’s what does ESPN want from this site? Because if they just want it to say the same, it’s going to stagnate a little bit.
Media conversations about Grantland often reach a point where people speculate on whether it’s making money (or, the extent of its losses). While the accounting of that can be quite difficult based on the way ESPN’s properties interact with each other, it was evident in his interview with Kafka that those questions are not lost on Simmons. He hoped for ESPN’s corporate staff to do a better job of monetizing his team’s multimedia output:
I think for what ESPN does as a company — it’s a company that’s built toward selling bigger things. They have deals with a lot of sponsors, and their money is going to gravitate toward bigger properties that ESPN has. The challenge for ESPN and a lot of other companies is trying to figure out how to keep those relationships, and also figuring out how to extend relationships, or create relationships with stuff that’s not Monday Night Football. […]
I do think, as a competitive person, the fact that we don’t have a sponsored studio yet is just perplexing to me. We shoot like 15 hours of TV in there. But I also don’t know anything about ad sales, and it’s probably a much more complicated landscape than I’m giving it credit for. But to me, that’s a no-brainer.
So, reading between the lines, it seems as though Simmons’ contract negotiations will be pegged to not just giving more resources to Grantland, but a concerted effort towards making more money from the work that he and his team are already creating. It’s impossible to fault him as a leader for doing that. Shouldn’t a quality product that is critically acclaimed be making more profits?
While Simmons may have a strong point about monetization of their audio and video, there are various print pieces that they run that will never in a thousand years make back what they cost to create. Their masthead already lists nearly 60 contributors, about a dozen of whom have “editor” in their title. It may be irksome to Simmons that ESPN’s ad sales staff concentrates so much more on fulfilling Monday Night Football inventory, but that’s what the largess of Grantland is subsidized by.
The anti-Simmons faction in ESPN’s old guard is presumably skeptical about his asking for more. How much is enough? Shouldn’t they be driving more traffic with a staff that size? How many more writers should we be expected to send all over the country and the world for vanity projects? And, even if we give him everything he wants now, won’t he still want more later, and still continue to publicly bash our other employees?
From Simmons’ perspective, you could see why he would want to be on a platform where he could say literally whatever he wants, and never have to worry about censorship. One could also understand why he would want to prove the naysayers wrong, and thrive outside the Mothership as Dan Patrick has done. What form that could take — a startup a la Glenn Beck, an existing media outlet, or a segmentation wherein he writes for one place and produces multimedia somewhere else — would be anyone’s guess.
Though there could (almost certainly will?) be bumps in the road along the way, and even if Simmons himself does not feel this way now, it remains difficult to wager against he and Skipper striking a deal. While Simmons could have unconditional freedom of speech elsewhere, he would not be reaching as large of an audience, and it’s very difficult to imagine that anybody would fund something as large as Grantland for him to preside over.
http://thebiglead.com/2015/04/01/bi...e-business-school-case-study-at-northwestern/
Why Was the New York Times the Bearer of Bad News on Bill Simmons and Jason Whitlock?
Last week, for the second Friday in just over a month, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times broke major news about ESPN. The removal of Jason Whitlock as head of The Undefeated — a website nearly two years in the making since his return to ESPN in August 2013 — was a media shocker, though not quite on par with the stunning public execution of his colleague, Bill Simmons. The Whitlock news leaked shortly before the formal PR announcement. Whitlock will stay at ESPN to write and do some TV and radio appearances, but his wings have been clipped.
From an inside-media perspective, it was compelling that Sandomir and the New York Times, his home for nearly 25 years, were a common thread. In early April, Sandomir wrote a generally positive piece on Jason Whitlock and The Undefeated. While the story did acknowledge Greg Howard of Deadspin’s June 2014 missive (a second one, which was almost certainly the death blow, would come less than a month after the Times piece), as well as an allusion to Whitlock’s past dismissal from ESPN, a bulk was comprised of quotes from Whitlock and network president John Skipper.
The New York Times story on Whitlock from a couple months ago follows a regular framework for Sandomir. He doesn’t explicitly take one side or another with his prose, but uses quotes that tie together a narrative that ultimately paints the subject favorably. Skipper’s words from the piece may look strange in retrospect given that Whitlock’s out of the project two months later, but Sandomir hedged himself enough that none of his own text can really be picked out and used against him.
This type of Sandomir piece is not unique to ESPN — you’ll also see similar straight news items about ventures from Fox, CBS, and NBC, complete with executive brand talk. While this is not to say that Sandomir is never critical of networks, his ire typically seems to be directed at individual broadcasts or announcers:
Sandomir wrote a piece on sports documentaries in March. While it covered the work of other networks, a majority was devoted to 30 for 30. Connor Schell of ESPN films was interviewed for the story, as were directors Jonathan Hock and Errol Morris. But, Simmons — a co-creator of the series — was not quoted or even mentioned by name. (In fairness, Sandomir did briefly reference Grantland in the documentary piece, and 30 for 30 in his eulogy of Simmons’ ESPN career.)
While this was in no way specifically directed at Sandomir, SI media reporter Richard Deitsch remarked in an appearance on Jason McIntyre’s radio show last month (49-minute mark): “[Simmons] was a founding member of 30 for 30 — even if ESPN PR wants to scrub him off of that.”
Sandomir, Simmons, and Whitlock all declined to comment for this piece.
Last November, Simmons and Schell appeared on a panel about storytelling, and it was largely about the documentary series they spearheaded together. On a tangent about biases in the media, Simmons said: “I think everybody has alliances. I think I’m transparent about mine, and it’s become part of what I write about. If you listen closely and read people, everybody’s got sources they protect.”
As Simmons alluded to on that panel, reporting is a relationship business. You can sense alliances in any number of transactional reports, especially on the NFL and the NBA. If one kept a scorecard, it would be fascinating to see which scoops from which agents, teams, and league offices most frequently go to which reporters. Unsurprisingly, you also see a lot of it in media reporting on media.
Sandomir, through his long tenure at the New York Times — which, for all real or perceived attrition, remains a preeminent national journalistic institution — has access to the most powerful network executives, and vice versa.
Ostensibly firing Simmons through Sandomir and the Times was a Machiavellian move for ESPN to get out ahead of the story. By reporting the news without contacting Simmons first — the abruptness was so severe that he learned of his own effective firing on Twitter — Sandomir also ensured that he wouldn’t lose the scoop to somebody else. While the stakes were never this high, seeking confirmation from the subject has cost our site stories before (though I’ve also heard that we’ve been the recipients).
Amplifying one’s message through the New York Times, or other outlets of record, is hardly unique to sports media coverage. News of Simmons and Whitlock is broken by Sandomir presumably for a similar reason that NYT’ers were on-site in Switzerland for the FIFA arrests. Those reporters maintain that they followed a trail of bread crumbs — and that they did not receive a handout — but they were in the position because their individual work and prestige of their publication gave them some form of access. (It’s possible, though less likely, that Whitlock, and not someone up the ladder at ESPN, gave Sandomir the news before it was released by ESPN).
With Simmons, there were certainly broader issues at ESPN that led to his exit. It was a combination of resource allocation and insubordination, which we’ve covered ad nauseam. As we said earlier, the writing was on the wall with Whitlock when Deadspin’s Greg Howard wrote an extensive piece — his second major Whitlock takedown in under a year — that collected myriad audio and email correspondence, as well as multiple accounts, that portrayed him as an abrasive and overbearing manager. In one email, he likened himself to a head coach, whose orders should therefore be followed enthusiastically, which is an ill-advised leadership model to replicate with millenial writers and editors.
Many know that Whitlock has a lot of history with this site. A scorched-Earth Q&A with our founding editor Jason McIntyre got him fired from his first stint at ESPN, and his return was first reported here. Whitlock has publicly and privately praised and criticized our work. While this isn’t a defense of some of what was reported about him, nor to say I agree with everything he writes, I personally was rooting for Whitlock to succeed in fostering an evocative staff.
What Simmons achieved at Grantland and what Whitlock sought to do at The Undefeated was to employ dozens of writers at a living wage — subsidized by ESPN — and enable them to pursue original ideas without the burden of pandering to fickle Google and Facebook algorithms. The goal was to focus on building a community, rather than a vehicle to pad stats of mobile users who stop by for five seconds and never return. While ESPN president John Skipper says these sites are positioned to survive without their anchors, how many of these jobs will still exist a year or two from now?
While Whitlock remains at ESPN, it will be interesting to see where he fits in the fold going forward as a standalone personality. Will his columns be featured on the front of the web site, and get discussed through various television and radio platforms? Or, will he essentially be writing for an audience comprised mainly of his Twitter followers?
With both Simmons and Whitlock, a lot more than is currently out there transpired behind the scenes. Non-disparagement clauses ensure their sides of the story remain largely untold. And, again, their respective situations are vastly different. But, if and when they decide to talk to reporters, we’re all ears.
http://thebiglead.com/2015/06/15/ne...-bad-news-on-bill-simmons-and-jason-whitlock/
Last week, for the second Friday in just over a month, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times broke major news about ESPN. The removal of Jason Whitlock as head of The Undefeated — a website nearly two years in the making since his return to ESPN in August 2013 — was a media shocker, though not quite on par with the stunning public execution of his colleague, Bill Simmons. The Whitlock news leaked shortly before the formal PR announcement. Whitlock will stay at ESPN to write and do some TV and radio appearances, but his wings have been clipped.
From an inside-media perspective, it was compelling that Sandomir and the New York Times, his home for nearly 25 years, were a common thread. In early April, Sandomir wrote a generally positive piece on Jason Whitlock and The Undefeated. While the story did acknowledge Greg Howard of Deadspin’s June 2014 missive (a second one, which was almost certainly the death blow, would come less than a month after the Times piece), as well as an allusion to Whitlock’s past dismissal from ESPN, a bulk was comprised of quotes from Whitlock and network president John Skipper.
The New York Times story on Whitlock from a couple months ago follows a regular framework for Sandomir. He doesn’t explicitly take one side or another with his prose, but uses quotes that tie together a narrative that ultimately paints the subject favorably. Skipper’s words from the piece may look strange in retrospect given that Whitlock’s out of the project two months later, but Sandomir hedged himself enough that none of his own text can really be picked out and used against him.
This type of Sandomir piece is not unique to ESPN — you’ll also see similar straight news items about ventures from Fox, CBS, and NBC, complete with executive brand talk. While this is not to say that Sandomir is never critical of networks, his ire typically seems to be directed at individual broadcasts or announcers:
Sandomir wrote a piece on sports documentaries in March. While it covered the work of other networks, a majority was devoted to 30 for 30. Connor Schell of ESPN films was interviewed for the story, as were directors Jonathan Hock and Errol Morris. But, Simmons — a co-creator of the series — was not quoted or even mentioned by name. (In fairness, Sandomir did briefly reference Grantland in the documentary piece, and 30 for 30 in his eulogy of Simmons’ ESPN career.)
While this was in no way specifically directed at Sandomir, SI media reporter Richard Deitsch remarked in an appearance on Jason McIntyre’s radio show last month (49-minute mark): “[Simmons] was a founding member of 30 for 30 — even if ESPN PR wants to scrub him off of that.”
Sandomir, Simmons, and Whitlock all declined to comment for this piece.
Last November, Simmons and Schell appeared on a panel about storytelling, and it was largely about the documentary series they spearheaded together. On a tangent about biases in the media, Simmons said: “I think everybody has alliances. I think I’m transparent about mine, and it’s become part of what I write about. If you listen closely and read people, everybody’s got sources they protect.”
As Simmons alluded to on that panel, reporting is a relationship business. You can sense alliances in any number of transactional reports, especially on the NFL and the NBA. If one kept a scorecard, it would be fascinating to see which scoops from which agents, teams, and league offices most frequently go to which reporters. Unsurprisingly, you also see a lot of it in media reporting on media.
Sandomir, through his long tenure at the New York Times — which, for all real or perceived attrition, remains a preeminent national journalistic institution — has access to the most powerful network executives, and vice versa.
Ostensibly firing Simmons through Sandomir and the Times was a Machiavellian move for ESPN to get out ahead of the story. By reporting the news without contacting Simmons first — the abruptness was so severe that he learned of his own effective firing on Twitter — Sandomir also ensured that he wouldn’t lose the scoop to somebody else. While the stakes were never this high, seeking confirmation from the subject has cost our site stories before (though I’ve also heard that we’ve been the recipients).
Amplifying one’s message through the New York Times, or other outlets of record, is hardly unique to sports media coverage. News of Simmons and Whitlock is broken by Sandomir presumably for a similar reason that NYT’ers were on-site in Switzerland for the FIFA arrests. Those reporters maintain that they followed a trail of bread crumbs — and that they did not receive a handout — but they were in the position because their individual work and prestige of their publication gave them some form of access. (It’s possible, though less likely, that Whitlock, and not someone up the ladder at ESPN, gave Sandomir the news before it was released by ESPN).
With Simmons, there were certainly broader issues at ESPN that led to his exit. It was a combination of resource allocation and insubordination, which we’ve covered ad nauseam. As we said earlier, the writing was on the wall with Whitlock when Deadspin’s Greg Howard wrote an extensive piece — his second major Whitlock takedown in under a year — that collected myriad audio and email correspondence, as well as multiple accounts, that portrayed him as an abrasive and overbearing manager. In one email, he likened himself to a head coach, whose orders should therefore be followed enthusiastically, which is an ill-advised leadership model to replicate with millenial writers and editors.
Many know that Whitlock has a lot of history with this site. A scorched-Earth Q&A with our founding editor Jason McIntyre got him fired from his first stint at ESPN, and his return was first reported here. Whitlock has publicly and privately praised and criticized our work. While this isn’t a defense of some of what was reported about him, nor to say I agree with everything he writes, I personally was rooting for Whitlock to succeed in fostering an evocative staff.
What Simmons achieved at Grantland and what Whitlock sought to do at The Undefeated was to employ dozens of writers at a living wage — subsidized by ESPN — and enable them to pursue original ideas without the burden of pandering to fickle Google and Facebook algorithms. The goal was to focus on building a community, rather than a vehicle to pad stats of mobile users who stop by for five seconds and never return. While ESPN president John Skipper says these sites are positioned to survive without their anchors, how many of these jobs will still exist a year or two from now?
While Whitlock remains at ESPN, it will be interesting to see where he fits in the fold going forward as a standalone personality. Will his columns be featured on the front of the web site, and get discussed through various television and radio platforms? Or, will he essentially be writing for an audience comprised mainly of his Twitter followers?
With both Simmons and Whitlock, a lot more than is currently out there transpired behind the scenes. Non-disparagement clauses ensure their sides of the story remain largely untold. And, again, their respective situations are vastly different. But, if and when they decide to talk to reporters, we’re all ears.
http://thebiglead.com/2015/06/15/ne...-bad-news-on-bill-simmons-and-jason-whitlock/
Former ESPN Star Bill Simmons Lands at HBO
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?p=15637353&posted=1#post15637353
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?p=15637353&posted=1#post15637353
Bill Simmons’s HBO Show Any Given Wednesday Will Start Airing in a Few Wednesdays
Nearly a year after his departure from ESPN, Bill Simmons has started to shore up his new empire at HBO, announcing the name of his upcoming show, Any Given Wednesday, which will premiere on June 22 (a Wednesday, whew!) at 10 p.m. The show will have a 20-episode first season, which will be available on HBO Go and HBO Now in addition to airing on the channel. It'll include talk of sports, entertainment, and current events, with celebrity guests and occasional field segments. "I'm excited about the show, I excited about the title and I’m really, really excited to drop my first F-bomb on TV," says Simmons. "We are going to figure out nudity down the road, as long as it’s tasteful." The Simmons–produced Game of Thrones recap show After the Thrones started airing this week, but we will know that Simmons has truly made it when his flagship series gets a recap show of its own: On Every Any Given Wednesday.
Nearly a year after his departure from ESPN, Bill Simmons has started to shore up his new empire at HBO, announcing the name of his upcoming show, Any Given Wednesday, which will premiere on June 22 (a Wednesday, whew!) at 10 p.m. The show will have a 20-episode first season, which will be available on HBO Go and HBO Now in addition to airing on the channel. It'll include talk of sports, entertainment, and current events, with celebrity guests and occasional field segments. "I'm excited about the show, I excited about the title and I’m really, really excited to drop my first F-bomb on TV," says Simmons. "We are going to figure out nudity down the road, as long as it’s tasteful." The Simmons–produced Game of Thrones recap show After the Thrones started airing this week, but we will know that Simmons has truly made it when his flagship series gets a recap show of its own: On Every Any Given Wednesday.
HBO cancels sports personality Bill Simmons' new talk show
That was a short run.
Bill Simmons' weekly HBO talk show "Any Given Wednesday" has been cancelled after only fourth months on the air. The final episode will air next week, HBO announced Friday.
SEE ALSO: Ben Affleck goes on expletive-filled Deflategate rant on Bill Simmons' new show
Despite Simmons' charisma and some viral appearances from celebrity guests, the show failed to attract the ratings to keep it on the air.
"We loved making that show, but unfortunately it never resonated with audiences like we hoped. And that's on me. But I love being a part of HBO's family and look forward to innovating with them on other ambitious programming ideas over these next several years — both for the network and for digital," Simmons said in a statement.
It's not all over between HBO and the sports commentator. The cable network is reportedly still going to work on future projects with Simmons' media group, according to Variety.
This isn't Simmons first time dealing with a shutdown. He was the editor-in-chief of ESPN-owned Grantland, a blog covering sports and pop culture. ESPN did not renew his contract and closed the site in October 2015. In June, he launched The Ringer, an independent publicationwith a similar focus.
http://mashable.com/2016/11/04/bill-simmons-cancelled/#Qyvy.5y5saq9
Bill Simmons HBO show cancelled
That was a short run.
Bill Simmons' weekly HBO talk show "Any Given Wednesday" has been cancelled after only fourth months on the air. The final episode will air next week, HBO announced Friday.
SEE ALSO: Ben Affleck goes on expletive-filled Deflategate rant on Bill Simmons' new show
Despite Simmons' charisma and some viral appearances from celebrity guests, the show failed to attract the ratings to keep it on the air.
"We loved making that show, but unfortunately it never resonated with audiences like we hoped. And that's on me. But I love being a part of HBO's family and look forward to innovating with them on other ambitious programming ideas over these next several years — both for the network and for digital," Simmons said in a statement.
It's not all over between HBO and the sports commentator. The cable network is reportedly still going to work on future projects with Simmons' media group, according to Variety.
This isn't Simmons first time dealing with a shutdown. He was the editor-in-chief of ESPN-owned Grantland, a blog covering sports and pop culture. ESPN did not renew his contract and closed the site in October 2015. In June, he launched The Ringer, an independent publicationwith a similar focus.
http://mashable.com/2016/11/04/bill-simmons-cancelled/#Qyvy.5y5saq9
Bill Simmons HBO show cancelled
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT83YP07yVuaH9J19YABhlw/videos
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Ringer
https://soundcloud.com/the-bill-simmons-podcast
https://soundcloud.com/the-watch-podcast
https://soundcloud.com/channel33
https://soundcloud.com/ringernbashow
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Channel+33+The+Ringer
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Ringer
https://soundcloud.com/the-bill-simmons-podcast
https://soundcloud.com/the-watch-podcast
https://soundcloud.com/channel33
https://soundcloud.com/ringernbashow
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Channel+33+The+Ringer
@ViCiouS
Spotify Is Buying Bill Simmons’s the Ringer
By Nicholas Quah@nwquah
Photo: Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
This morning, just in time for its earnings call, Spotify officially announced that it is buying the Ringer, the podcast-heavy digital-media company founded by former ESPN personality Bill Simmons in 2016. Word of such a deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in mid-January, which described the talks at the time as “early.” Well, now it’s official: The Sports Guy will be joining Spotify, along with the sizable staff he’s built at the Ringer.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but what has been confirmed is a detail that has been the most puzzling: Not only will Spotify absorb the Ringer’s vibrant podcast operation, the Swedish streaming audio platform will also be bringing in the rest of the latter’s digital-media operation, which has aggressively spread itself out across multiple platforms in search of diverse revenue streams. In addition to a thriving audio division, the Ringer has a consumer-facing website (with a fairly large stable of writers and creatives that have unionized), a book-publishing deal, a documentary unit, and an active YouTube operation.
Oh, and that doesn’t include a few podcasts that are exclusive to Luminary, the somewhat troubled paid-podcast platform, which is probably a detail that needs to be sorted out.
Of course, the Ringer isn’t just a sports-media company; it also does a lot of successful work in the pop-culture space (think Binge Mode and The Rewatchables). Furthermore, it’s not just a company built around one person — Simmons — but a staff of over 90 people, many of which are very strong creatives in their own right. There’s some uncertainty in how news of the completed deal will go over with the staff, which is unionized with WGA East; after The Wall Street Journal report came out on the existence of the talks, the Ringer Union issued a statement that the workforce had learned about the deal through press, not through senior management. So far, that situation doesn’t appear to have been remedied.
This acquisition comes in the midst of Spotify’s hard push to become more than a music-streaming platform. Last year, it spent more than $400 million to acquire three podcast companies — Gimlet Media, Parcast, and Anchor — and began expanding its portfolio of exclusive podcast programming and partnerships, including one with the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground. In November, the company’s CEO Daniel Ek and content chief Dawn Ostroff appeared on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter as part of an ongoing campaign to signal its intent on becoming “the world’s No. 1 audio platform.”
With some caveats, a successful acquisition of the Ringer makes a good deal of sense for Spotify. To begin with, the sports- and pop-culture-heavy website is uniquely strong in audio, with a portfolio of 30-plus podcasts that brings in more than 100 million downloads a month. And unlike some of Spotify’s other podcast acquisitions, there’s no question that the Ringer is able to generate decent revenue for the company. According to another Wall Street Journal article from last January, its audio division exceeded $15 million in ad sales for 2018.
But the addition of the Ringer’s robust audio division would also vastly increase the number of talk-style podcasts in Spotify’s original-programming portfolio, which is currently heavy on the narrative side. This is both a matter of aesthetics and a matter of cost, as talk podcasts are largely considered to be more cost effective than narrative podcasts (not always, but still).
In any case, it should be noted that these talks don’t come out of the blue. The two companies already have an existing working relationship in the form of The Hottest Take, a bite-size daily podcast — which, by the way, we thought was one of the best podcasts from last year.
How Spotify thinks about the Ringer’s audio operations in the context of its larger podcast ambitions will be the thing to watch. A big indicator can be found in this morning’s earnings call, when Ek said of the deal, “What we really did with the Ringer, I think, is we bought the next ESPN.” Which is to say, they’re really thinking about the sports category.
Simmons, of course, has built a substantial career and following through his work in sports media, and the Ringer is, to a large extent, a continued expression of that position. Media about sports is an undeniably lucrative category, fueling valuable businesses across television, talk radio, digital websites, video games, and so on. Podcasting, as well, has its own sports-oriented fortunes, one such example being Barstool Sports, the controversial media company that itself has a strong podcast operation, which recent reports say is being sold off at a valuation of $450 million to Penn National Gaming, a sports-betting company.
But there’s quite a bit of unprecedented potential action to be found in the combination of a sports-media company and a deep-pocketed streaming audio platform with a substantial global reach — something we perhaps haven’t seen in the on-demand audio arena before.
I wonder if Steven A could’ve pulled a move like this years ago
Bill Simmons Addresses Backlash Over Lack of Diversity at The Ringer
Bill Simmons on Friday addressed on his podcast the backlash over the lack of diversity at The Ringer which was highlighted in a recent 'New York Times' story that detailed newsroom concern.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
^^^^
Draymond Green blasts Bill Simmons: What work has he done in life that qualifies him to have a say in NBA player salaries?
Draymond Green posted the audio clip and responded to Simmons. Green was not only upset at Simmons’s comments, he also wanted the NBA to take notice that someone who shares this kind of opinion sho…
hoopshype.com