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The Bill Simmons Podcast (2 Viewers)

Flat out sucks
Eh, the Barkley segment was pretty good I thought.  The Steph Curry commercial crap, Affleck, and the end segment were all bad though.  Seriously, if you're going to do a who won the week segment for sports this week and you don't pick LeBron or Cleveland, you're insane.  

 
You guys are tough. First show, i didn't think it was that bad. Affleck drunken over-the-top homerism was hilarious. Totally delusional. Explaining that Brady didn't over cell phone because maybe he's too much of a "gentleman" to have his peers hear what he thinks about them. Or maybe it was because there were "funny, lovely sex messages from his wife" on it. Man, he was hammered.

 
Damn - I thought it was decent.

Barkley interview was great.  Curry commercial got a chuckle. 

Dunno - think we were all predisposed to hate it (at least if you read through this thread, it seems that way). I was ready to hate it, but didn't.

 
Was entertaining.  Like any Simmons podcast.

Don't know why HBO think it helps them or will be a draw for their brand.

The NFL weekly shows barely survive on HBO/Showtime.  This has no chance.

 
You guys are tough. First show, i didn't think it was that bad. Affleck drunken over-the-top homerism was hilarious. Totally delusional. Explaining that Brady didn't over cell phone because maybe he's too much of a "gentleman" to have his peers hear what he thinks about them. Or maybe it was because there were "funny, lovely sex messages from his wife" on it. Man, he was hammered.
Who would give their boss their cellphone?  End of discussion.

 
Who would give their boss their cellphone?  End of discussion.
If a co-worker accused me of breaking company rules and screwing him over, and my boss had text messages already in hand that seemed to be proof of that, and my boss gave me the opportunity to prove that the texts were out of context and about something else. And was going to allow me to prove that by allowing me to give my lawyer my cellphone and have him submit only the texts that corroborated my side of the story, then

A) If I'm innocent I eagerly give my lawyer my cellphone in order to prove my innocence and keep from being punished

B) If I'm guilty, I freak out and destroy my cellphone and make up a lame lie

If I chose option 2, a giant red flag would go up for my boss and I would expect him to either start really digging into more areas of my work looking for problems or he would simply fire me because he couldn't trust me anymore.

 
Also seems that the closer he gets to being a media emperor, the more apparent his dooshy characteristics become. Or maybe I'm just taking in too much of his product.
You are taking in too much of his product.  And in a related story, you're also absolutely right in your first sentence. 

 
And the Ringer sucks, too. So fluffy.
Yeah, can't say I've been impressed with it so far. I visited Grantland multiple times per day. With The Ringer, I have their RSS feed set up and barely read any of the articles because they don't really seem all that interesting to me.

 
I'll echo what I read from the sports media guy at Newsday...a LeBron opinion piece 48 hours after everyone else has put out theirs shows the problem with trying to put out a weekly show like this. Then add in the horse-has-been-beaten-for-months DeflateGate talk...ugh. 

 
I made it about 2 minutes through the opening monologue before changing channels.  I enjoy his podcasts.  TV not so much.

 
If a co-worker accused me of breaking company rules and screwing him over, and my boss had text messages already in hand that seemed to be proof of that, and my boss gave me the opportunity to prove that the texts were out of context and about something else. And was going to allow me to prove that by allowing me to give my lawyer my cellphone and have him submit only the texts that corroborated my side of the story, then

A) If I'm innocent I eagerly give my lawyer my cellphone in order to prove my innocence and keep from being punished

B) If I'm guilty, I freak out and destroy my cellphone and make up a lame lie

If I chose option 2, a giant red flag would go up for my boss and I would expect him to either start really digging into more areas of my work looking for problems or he would simply fire me because he couldn't trust me anymore.
Why don't we add in these factors:

1) you KNOW that if you give the cell phone to your boss, his office will "accidentally" leak all the information to the press, and you KNOW the press will plaster the contents of the cell phone everywhere in the world. (Yes, you could give the cell to your lawyer to give information to your boss, but after the cell is out of your hands, you have lost control of it and anything could happen, and you have learned not to trust anything)

2) you've got extremely private/personal/embarrassing things on your cell phone that are completely unrelated to the incident at hand.  (cheating on wife? like to watch nasty pron? think your star receiver is a coont? think your offensive line smells like fish tacos? we are only limited by our imagination.).

 
I'm assuming HBO approached Simmons about the TV show, not the other way around, correct?  Did they think they needed to in order to get him to sign up for the other stuff he is good at?

 
on the Offdee scale of screen presence and charisma, Simmons is approximately a negative 33 - most likely to name drop incessantly and stare awkwardly into the camera

 
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I'm assuming HBO approached Simmons about the TV show, not the other way around, correct?  Did they think they needed to in order to get him to sign up for the other stuff he is good at?
Yes, and they also bought a small piece of the media company he started. Part of that was probably because he's going to be doing so much cross-promotion between The Ringer and his HBO show that it would almost be harder for them not to be partners in that way. The show is a gamble but even with Simmons making a ton, the other costs related to it are probably pretty low. 

 
I did watch the entire program, but I found myself wanting to turn it off, and I can't imagine giving it more than 1 or 2 more episodes.

The show format didn't really do it for me.   I keep giving him a chance because I loved a lot of those 2002-2007 columns... but for the most part I haven't liked much of what he's done since starting a podcast...  I thought I'd give this a shot because it was HBO

 
His face is pretty distracting.  

Looks like his volume of podcasts will probably take a hit too to produce the show which sucks.  I don't need the show, but I love almost all of the pods.  

Also... the website is a mess.  They are churning out content a few times an hour it seems with just random takes and stories ranging from a paragraph to long articles.  I don't get the website at all.  I think that was poorly executed.

 
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what's this now?
I know there are people that have more info about this than i do, but just listen to his podcast. There's so much stuff in those that scream 'I read the FFA' that I wouldn't blink if he said 'I'm shuked' about something he didn't quite understand

 
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I know there are people that have more info about this than i do, but just listen to his podcast. There's so much stuff in those that scream 'I read the FFA' that I wouldn't blink if he said 'I'm shuked' about something he didn't quite understand
That's just because Simmons suffers from classic Only Child Syndrome which really doubles as Message Board Behavior 101. 

 
Try having it on while reading your phone or doing something else that keeps your eyes from the screen.  Then, it's very much like a podcast.

 
His face is pretty distracting.  

Looks like his volume of podcasts will probably take a hit too to produce the show which sucks.  I don't need the show, but I love almost all of the pods.  

Also... the website is a mess.  They are churning out content a few times an hour it seems with just random takes and stories ranging from a paragraph to long articles.  I don't get the website at all.  I think that was poorly executed.
Did he get face work? 

 
Still enjoying the podcasts, although I pick and choose as there seems to be more than I can listen too. Will probably never tune into the show, as I don't see how a weekly sports show works, in this age of instant infomation. By Wednesday night, the biggest sports stories are most likely going to be at least 3 days old, if not more. I skip over podcasts that wait 2 days, much less that long to comment on something. Just not sure the audience, I just know it's not me. But good luck to Bill, as long as it allows him to pick the lines with Sal, I'm all for it.

 
I saw someone allude to the fact that he's been getting work done. I have no clue.
Tough to say for sure but he has a scar under the right corner of his mouth that looks like it's been somewhat filled with botox. Also looks like he's thickened his hair with transplants. They're good ones and he has the right kind of hair to do it. He was wearing buckets of makeup last night, including his neck. He's in great shape though, you can see that in his face. Obviously eats really well. When people get in that kind of shape and lose that last 10 or so pounds they always look younger/different.

Affleck has the best hair transplant in the business. He had bad plugs when he did Armageddon and has since had everything corrected to where it's virtually undetectable. Speaking of Affleck, from Variety:
 

Simmons’ interview with Ben Affleck about the New England Patriots and the scandal termed “Deflategate” turned into one of the most fascinating character studies I’ve seen on a talk show. Simmons and Affleck are both Bostonians, and their shared affinity for the Patriots creates an automatic kind of kinship. But given minimal prodding, Affleck went off about the controversy, running up and down rhetorical flourishes about the NFL’s treachery with the cadence and confidence of a barfly. Simmons nodded and smiled throughout most of the interview, letting Affleck talk himself out; at one point, the actor referred to Jennifer Garner as his wife, willfully forgetting, apparently, the divorce and his own infidelity.

It’s quite the portrait of a sadsack — honestly, it’s hard not to come away from the interview thinking that maybe Affleck needs help
.He was clearly hammered, right?  His camp saying he's stone cold sober.

 
I'm old and dull so I like text more than podcasts and TV shows.  Maybe I was spoiled by Grantland but I'm disappointed by the Ringer.  I don't mind the mix of topics but the lack of depth in the articles is a problem.  Grantland was mostly long-form while the Ringer is primarily the typical short-attention clickbait content that's available on a bunch of other sites.  There have been a number of Ringer articles I've read where I've gotten to the end and wondered what happened to the rest of it.  The writer threw out a semi-provocative idea but didn't analyze the topic to any sort of conclusion.   The new site seems geared to readers on their phone in the office restroom which wasn't the case on Grantland.

 
Watch guys like Conan or Letterman's first shows.  They were awful. Not comparing Simmons to those guys but to make a definitive judgement after night one of a show like this is a little unfair. The guests are what will make or break this thing. Needs big time, interesting people on it. Then Simmons can open them up in a way they normally wouldn't on the late night shows. The Affleck segment was fascinating.

 

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