Grantland is, for me, the following people:

Simmons
Lowe
McIndoe
Barnwell
Rembert

If you take those guys away there is almost nothing left for me on that site. Conversly, you move them all to some other site, I'm there instantly.

I enjoy the hollywood perspective guys too (Chris and Andy). Sub them in for Rembert and I'm in the same situation.

So this is a public bitch-slapping from Skipper. I wonder if the 2.2 B cog known as the NFL pressured them to do this after Simmons' take on The DPS yesterday.

With his contract expiring Sep. 30, we will be getting 5 months of radio silence. So Bill loses commentary on the NBA, for fucking shame.

Simmons wasn't given permission to appear on DPS either.

So at the end of his podcast on Monday he talked about how Bill Don't Lie was being pushed to Monday and then alluded that the reason would become clear around mid-week. Any chance he saw this coming and that is somehow related, or is there something else that explains that comment that I'm just not aware of (I haven't listened to Bill Don't Lie so maybe it was explained there)?

I wanna think he's inspired by Carolla to go do his own thing. I just wouldn't pay for podcast content and website articles though. And sometimes Simmons has a really low work rate. I'm sure he'll be fine.

Surprising. I thought that a lot of the Simmons and ESPN not liking each other was all a show. They are a huge name that opens whatever door (or gets him whatever tickets, etc.) he wants opened. He seems to really really like being important and hanging with celebrities, and ESPN helps him be that person.

ESPN got the clicks of the people who enjoyed reading Simmons go off against ESPN, the NFL, etc. Basically, by keeping one of their critics in-house, they could control (and profit from) anti-ESPN-corporate rhetoric.

I don't think that it was as contrived as meetings where they planned out what he would say. But I did think that there was an unspoken understanding where his "I'm a bad boy outsider" gimmick worked well for everyone.

He will pretty much be able to get a blank check from FS1 or another site wanting to gain instant credibility. And if he takes Barnwell, Lowe, etc with him (or an implicit understanding that they will come when their ESPN contracts are up)? That's a pretty good package deal.

I think the thing that is tricky is the criticism of the NFL specifically Roger Goodell. It will be interesting to see how a Fox or a NBC deals with one of their national stars saying the NFL commissioner "lacks testicular fortitude".

The status of other Grantland writers, where they go and whose jobs they might be taking at other sites are far more interesting to me than Simmons. For example, a Yahoo NBA reporting team of Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe would be interesting.

C'mon, McIndoe. You can make SportsDigs happen.

Not really bothered by Simmons leaving. I thought the Grantland version of Simmons wasn't nearly as good as previous version. Seemed to revel a little too much in his homerism/rebellious writer.

It probably does mark the end of Grantland, though Barnwell became my NFL must read. Love his insight. Titus is pretty good for my college basketball fix.

The Grantland NFL podcast is probably the best NFL program out there.

http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/f...ation-20150508

Sums up my thoughts on him very well. Great at first. Caricature of himself later. But he opened the door for guys like Barnwell, etc. that can write in a guy at a bar style, but, unlike Simmons, not have to rely on humor instead of really good analysis.

Good piece. It does get at what might be Grantland's downfall. From everything I've read, including this article, Grantland, while a critical success, lags on site traffic and revenue. Hard to see ESPN continuing to support that long term.

I mean, I loved The National back in the day, but, oh well.

This Vanity Fair article reads like Simmons getting his side out through an intermediary. Some interesting info.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/...mmons-and-espn

I see some parallels between Simmons and Andrew Sullivan. Both guys were pioneer bloggers in their fields. And both guys got an audience committed to them individually. And both guys chaffed at restrictions and seem tough to work with.

Sullivan bounced from place to place until he went solo with a subscription model. Then he burned out and retired. I don't see Simmons burning out the same way. I do see him possibly going on a peripetic adventure as he bounces from opportunity to opportunity.

And I think that ESPN is nuts if it thinks that, say, the BS Report has a loyal audience outside of Simmons.

WOW! he made 5M a year...thats insane.

I suspect it depends on the content. Honestly, I rarely ever look at the bylines on Grantland until after reading the content. If the content is good, there's something there ... whether or not that's something that justifies the separate identity, eh, that's probably a different call.

Grantland was always supposed to be 'prestige programming' for ESPN, but it's definitely eye-opening/sad to see the share of their traffic that's from Simmons as opposed to everyone else. It will be even more of a money pit now, but it'll be interesting to see how far ESPN goes in order to passive-aggressively 'win the breakup.'

list of grantland pieces about deadspin, since 2011:

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) May 12, 2015

Jim Miller is a buddy of Bill's. He's been on his podcast numerous times and Bill helped pimp out his SNL stuff. Still, it was a pretty good read and helped shed some light on the breakup (even if it was mostly from a pro-Simmons perspective).

Then again, if you want the anti-Simmons perspective, just head over to deadspin. It's pretty clear that site has some massive Simmons/Grantland envy and is doing everything it can to try and tarnish their name. It makes since, given Grantland is probably one of the bigger competitors to Deadspin and they get a double benefit of tearing down Simmons while getting more eyes on their site pages.

I'm not sure this is true.

Deadspin appears to be playing to what its audience wants to read. It's great popcorn drama, and the audience eats it up. Take a look at what trends on their network.

They are actually fairly complimentary to Grantland most of their articles. (They admittedly don't like Simmons as a writer, but praise him as an editor and as a podcaster.)

More importantly, though, they link to their articles in their own content. If you were trying to tear down your opponent, why would you give them clicks by linking to their articles? The name of the game for blog sites is unique visits and click throughs.

There's a definite "shock jock" appeal they are going for, but there seems like a sense of anger when Simmons and/or certain parts of Grantland come up. Here are just a few from the past few days:
Report: Bill Simmons Is Leaving ESPN
How To Employ Bill Simmons
Bill Simmons Is A Shitty Writer
Why ESPN Fired Bill Simmons
Photoshop Contest: Where Is Bill Simmons?

Go back further and you see them attacking Whitlock's "black grantland" site, they list the 12 worst grantland stories from year X (you can search the year), etc. It's clear they have some kind of vendetta.

It's a lot of backhanded compliments (ie, Grantland sucks, but this one guy wrote a nice article) - or ones directed at specific writer who haven't been there long. I think they like some of the content there, but have a vested interest in tearing down Simmons.

Because it actually helps deadspin's SEO. Linking to numerous legit articles in your site is a way to improve your search rating. Not to mention, many blogs think that having actual links to real articles improves their own credibility.

Just look at the number of comments on the articles you linked. I think they like Grantland just where it is. Drama filled, an easy content target and and behind it in the traffic rankings.

Back in October, Grantland had 4 mil unique visitors and ranked 2200 nationally. Back then, Deadspin had 17.9 million visitors and ranked 820. In April, Grantland had 13 million unique visitors and ranked 1420 nationally - while Deadspin had 15 mil and ranked 950. Grantland was on a course to pass Deadspin in the next 24 months. Simmons leaving, though, could throw a wrench into it.

I do think Deadspin is a pure shock and grab hits site, though, so this could just be them jumping onto some easy traffic by talking smack about Simmons and Grantland.

I don't think anything is particularly backhanded. What the articles are saying boils down to:

1. Bill Simmons' target audience is people who had that one poster of naked ladies with Pink Floyd album covers painted on their backsides. That's just a criticism.

2. On the heels of that success with said demographic, ESPN gave him a lot of money and creative freedom. That's a pretty neutral statement.

3. Bill Simmons has done a good job of hiring competent people, paying them well, and letting them do their thing. That's maybe backhanded towards Simmons himself (saying that's not what one would have expected given points 1 and 2) but not the site.

Hey, we want to read analysis and speculation about this and things like this. You think we're going to get that at ESPN?

Perfect spot for him. I worried he was going to try to do some over-the-top subscription model. I look forward to him doing this thing without the content restrictions of ESPN, and hope this means a lot of great HBO sports documentaries.

Agree. Really looking forward to having his podcasts back. I doubt I'll end up watching his weekly show, but like his podcasts, the guests and his interactions with them could make it good.

Makes sense for both sides.

Will he still be able to have someone like Cousin Sal on?

Probably not as long as Sal works for ABC

Good point, molson. That's a shame. Their guess the lines podcast was one of my favorites.

I wouldn't be so sure. I'm assuming Bill Maher has guests on from other networks. If both companies can work things out for good cross-promotion, they will. Now if this show was airing at 11:30pm on a weekday against Kimmel (it never would), I can see ABC saying no.

I doubt there would be much of a roadblock put up to get a guy on a podcast with a comparatively smaller audience than the show he works for.

A lot of talk shows tend to have people on from other networks. And they may not even mention what network (Letterman for a while kept saying "from another network" whenever folks from NBC shows would come on).

I know ESPN didn't let its people on the Dan Patrick Show, at least for a while. I'd be pretty surprised to see Simmons and current ESPN on-air people together on HBO.

The one thing Sal has going for him is that Jimmy is a big shot with ABC and they probably won't fuck with him too much.

And ESPN wouldn't let people on WFAN radio after the two sides were bickering at each other through the shows. Patrick was a pretty messy divorce I believe. For all that seems to have happened between Simmons and top management, he still cares about a lot of people there so I don't think we're going to see the "scorched Earth" takedown of ESPN that others seem to think is coming. So absent that, I think it'll all work out. But of course if he does, I would expect a similar ban to be put in place.

Smart move by Simmons. He's probably making as much as he would at ESPN for a fraction of the work.

What's the big deal about video podcasts? Do we need video of two people sitting across from each other and talking? No. Audio podcasts are just fine. Spend money on booking good guests and improving sound quality instead of a set and video equipment.

Or go the Ricky Gervais Show route and animate the entire thing.

Only if they get those Taiwanese news animators.

I'm not sure if the videos are really thought of a "big deal" in reality; more of an ancillary benefit of recording the content in the first place. But these guys conceivably want to spend money on a nice set in order to attract those good guests. Podcasting has grown well beyond "guys with two mics in a basement/garage" (save for Maron). Plus there's also a lot of people who won't spend 45 minutes to an hour listening to a podcast, and pushing out edited Youtube clips of these conversations or embedding them into other content definitely has a lot of value.


Sports Guy tried that already.

eta: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...59FDDCA33D748F

I'm down for that.

Norm MacDonald does a video podcast, and it's an entirely different beast than if was just audio.

What you're describing is a talk show, not a podcast. Podcasts are supposed to be longer and more in-depth, not necessarily chopped up into context-less short video clips for the masses.

I listen to all the Simmons podcasts but I'd really miss the Sal ones. It also sux we already missed Chad Ford and the draft as well as we won't get Matthew Berry doing preseason FF.

At least House and Jacko will presumably be around.

TV/@hbo decision re @BillSimmons world came 1st but there will be another announcement in future as to where he will call home for digital.

— James Andrew Miller (@JimMiller) July 22, 2015

Sounds like there is more information about Simmons to come.

I actually prefer the grantland video podcasts over their audio versions. They are able to put things into context by using graphics, and by seeing the people themselves.

Bill and Jalen.
Jalen and Jacoby's Pop The Trunk
Hollywood Prospectus.

Podcasting has definitely grown to be more than being consumed as just audio.

They'll be the same podcasts, presumably. HBO put "video podcasts" in the press release because, well, they are a premium video service and Simmons has (had) I believe the most popular sports podcast. You were talking about not needing to spend money on a set when the point is that the added cost is negligible.

Colin wanted to get to FOX sports a bit early.

Colin Cowherd no longer on ESPN air after comments about Dominican Republic players

If FOX will still take him.

I seriously doubt FOX kills this deal.

I generally understand why radio folks that I don't personally like are successful, but I have never understood how Cowherd has a career. He must have a huge audience of people that tolerate him because they can't find anything better.

Beaumonty Jones is my new fave. I started calling my youngest daughter Beaumonty because we were coming home from basketball practice while he is on. She wasn't impressed.

Cowherd tends to be upfront and honest. He is basically a sports shock jock, and he generally does not care if some people get upset because of it. He has definitive opinions that might go against commonly held beliefs but he can clearly explain why he believes what he does. He is also not afraid to admit when he was wrong about something. These are traits that many people love for radio.

It would rather kill its deal with Cowherd than mess up the one they have with MLB.

I think you are overestimating the value that MLB places on the feelings of those that might be offended. I could be 100% wrong on this one but I feel in circumstances like this, MLB believes this too shall pass.

Tarcone, it's Bomani.

@ $36/month? Hell no.

That price point makes little sense considering you can get all of the ESPNs and more for $25 a month on Sling TV.

They'll probably pull themselves out of the Sling deal first, which they can do if they lose a certain # of subscribers.

+1

I dont believe CC even believes half the shit he says. I think he takes the worst of Stern, and mixes it with the worst of Rome (I happen to really like both) and produces the worst show on radio. I actually bought Sirius JUST because of Cowherd. I like to listen to sports in the car on OTA I have no other options during his time slot, so I bought Sirius exclusively to have an option.

Dola - I'd gladly pay $10/month or so for ESPN but not much more.

I might be in the minority, but any TV service without DVR is a no-go for me. I don't want to go back to a world of sports programming altering my life plans. I wouldn't pay $36/month for ESPN all year, but if it was the entire ESPN family with ESPN3 and everything else, I might go close to that for college football and basketball seasons. Then just about the only thing I'd miss about cable/satellite is UFC on Fox Sports 1.

Pity the shark didn't bite Grantland in the ass as it jumped over.

When you reach the point of posting articles about Drake & some dude that has presumably even less talent since I've literally never heard his fucking name before, the shark has been vaulted.

Good idea for a site, the direction has ultimately failed to the point where I simply not only can't abide seeing their crap anymore but to where I actively hope whomever thought that worthless bullshit warranted space dies in a fucking fire.

I'm gonna call that last sentence a bit of an overreaction.

FWIW it was the #1 trending item on Twitter in the US today.

I'll grant that it would have stood better with a clarification, along the lines of "whomever thought it belonged on what was supposed to be a sports site ..."


Speaks volumes about the incredibly limited value of Twitter for anyone with a f'n brain. It's not entirely useless but a large portion of its user base apparently is.

It's supposed to be a "Sports and Pop Culture site"...says it right in the header.

Well that's a mix that ain't worth a tinker's dam.

It sucks on radio when I've heard it tried, sucks even harder to have some pretty good sports content buried with utter garbage articles.

Seems like a strange thing to be upset by. Grantland has ALWAYS done pop culture articles.

Yeah. I go to the site more often for the pop culture articles than the sports. Sportswise, I always read Maple Leafs' and Bill Barnwell's stuff, but other than that...

Especially when there's SO much going on in the sporting world this time of year that should be covered instead. Baseball playoffs are only two months away, football teams might start practicing sometime soon, basketball teams are only a couple months away from starting practice, people are probably golfing in golf events. Where is the coverage?!

Honestly, I could let ESPN go, as long as I can have the BTN.

Good job, Kodos! You've finally found the silver lining to being an University of Indiana football fan.

It's Indiana University, sir. ;)

Also, you're still looking for that Silver lining in Detroit, I imagine.

Disney stock hit by ESPN fears - Aug. 5, 2015

I've known it's been around, I've rarely seen it. Suddenly every "push" I get from them on social media is stuff that I have exactly zero interest in (and that's being generous), rarely a sports related article directed to my attention for the past several weeks.

That has almost surely colored my perception of what they're doing and in what ratio. And perception is an enormous driver for virtually all media, they may not have changed one single thing but my perception of them has gone from probably 70% positive to probably 90% negative in a matter of weeks.

Well then stop caring what they do on social media and use this - The Triangle « - as your link to it. (Although they do some good features too.) I mean I agree it's gotten a little more pop culture than I'd like (hate on Simmons all you want, but back when he wrote he certainly put out sports-related articles that were worth reading), but they do a very good job delineating Sports/Pop Culture. Especially compared to, say, ESPN.com, which I've been back to maybe like 3 times since the redesign.

(Seriously, for anyone who doesn't have it or something similar, I can't recommend TheScore app highly enough. It legitimately just gives scores, and standings, and stats.)

I'm not sure if there's been anything else where I would love to be able to press the fast forward button and see how things shake out 5-10 years down the road than everything related to bundling and sports.

This is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite FOFC posts.

So social media has colored your perception of the site? Seriously, that's pretty lame dude.

I'm interested too. Seems like a model that can't continue to sustain itself like this with more and more cutting the cord. I'm also interested to see how this impacts TV contracts in the future. Will they actually start clawing back in the other direction?

Bear in mind here, it's their social media I'm referring to, not random social media or something. They choose what they hype to their FB followers, what they consider important enough to try to ensure that I'm aware of.

The number of times I've ever organically visited Grantland in its entire existence is almost certainly single-digits. That's not a site -- nor are 99.99% of sites -- that I sit around and think "oh, let's go see what's there today".

I hit my aggregator site/browser home page, FB, two newspapers, one sports site, this musty joint and on most days 1-2 music sites of my own accord. Oh and I guess Google counts there since it gets hit when I'm in search of something specific, which is multiple times a day. Virtually everything else comes from some prompt. Either a social media prompt/hype/link from a site's own doing or something that's been shared by a friend/acquaintance that catches my attention enough to look closer.

One of the older tendencies I'm aware of with mass media is that consumers perception of you is exponentially affected by what you promote. The classic example that was used to teach the importance of promotion & positioning (what is usually called "branding" now) was the radio station that got low marks from listeners as a source for traffic & weather over several years despite being #1 for news. They shot to the #1 unaided recall position within 3 months by making one & only one change to their traffic & weather coverage: 5-10 times an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week they hyped themselves as having "traffic & weather together on the 5s". Their coverage didn't change one iota, the only change they made was that they emphasized the amount of coverage they did. Suddenly, the listeners considered them THE go-to source for traffic & weather in the market. THAT is the power of promotion/branding, say what's important to you & people will generally believe it's important to you.

That same phenomena has worked in reverse with me & Grantland. They may have changed absolutely nothing except what they promote within my line of sight ... and in doing so they've made a rapid shift in how I perceive them overall.

A reality show featuring JimInGA searching the Internet is something I would support.

Hence why I called it lame. If the content is the same, what part of that content they choose to focus on in promotion should be irrelevant for current consumers of the product.

So if (tries to find example) AMC aired The Walking Dead one hour a week but hyped a 23/7 block of "All Kardashians All The Time" to fans of TWD you don't find it reasonable those TWD fan perceptions of the network would be influenced by that?

No, they shouldn't. That's just silly. Does it reduce the amount of time they air TWD? And let's be honest, your view is far more analagous to people deciding not to watch TWD because of Kardashian promotions, for a one hour Kardashian show.

I mean the fact that Fox runs a traitor news network doesn't have any impact on my watching television shows on their broadcast network. :p

Noooooo, if there's something decent at Grantland then I'll still consider looking if it comes to mind. Same as I'd watch TWD while thinking the Kardashian channel was utter shite overall and that those responsible for making it shite should be boiled in oil. A preferable situation would be if the decent content were somewhere that wasn't cluttered by utter garbage and I'm rarely to not at least acknowledge that a better option exists. Not expecting it to occur doesn't discount the option of at least wishing it did.

How bout this ... how bout we just agree that at least ONE of us has a very fucked up way at looking at things? :)

They shouldn't, and its silly, but Breaking Bad fans lost their fucking minds at the overpromotion of Low Winter Sun (especially when Low Winter Sun turned out to be a not so good show) during Breaking Bad. It was... ridiculous, but the hate was pretty widespread.

Indeed. And like you said, it was ridiculous. And quite a lame reaction.

Well that's putting it mildly ;)

Just for the record, there has been no change at all in what Grantland pushes on social media. Everything goes out on Twitter; most (but not all) things go out on Facebook.

Remember, you don't see everything a site pushes to Facebook. There's an algorithm, largely random, that only shows you a small slice of what's posted. It sounds like you've had some bad luck in terms of what's wound up in your feed vs. what you'd prefer to see. That's all that's going on here.

Yes, I'm very familiar with the algorithm.

Just looked at the FB page itself, of posts timestamped as the past 24 hours, it's 9 sports & 7 non. Of those, my feed got hit with 0/3.

Of those tagged by FB as "yesterday", it's 6 sports/7 non (including several nons that repeated themselves in the past 24 hours). I believe I got 0/2 of those.

All told, it's virtually 50/50 for the past two days ... that's just a site killer for me when the closest thing to even barely passing interest of the 14 non-sports items is a Meryl Streep movie I give zero fucks about.

{shrug} I'm not the target, so I'll move on.

It's not really random. They throttle it until companies pay. It's a weird strategy in my opinion.

Switch to Twitter where there currently isn't weird walls blocking you from getting news you want pushed to you.

Well, yes, there's the shakedown model too. (One that Twitter desperately wants to move towards.)

See? Isn't that easier than railing against the stupidity of a change that didn't actually happen?

Umm .. what changed is my perception, based on what is put in front of me voluntarily by the g.d. site. Perception IS reality, like it or not. You can defend it {shrug}, I can hope those responsible for writing garbage articles about garbage performers like f'n Drake diaf. {shrug}

It should have been -- and could have been -- a topnotch sports site. Instead, it opted to pander to the lowest common denominator, same as TMZ.

Like I said, you can defend 'em,well within your rights ... I have the same right to say fuck 'em.

Is it any wonder the Thrashers left Atlanta? :D

Well, there really isn't much in sports uglier than bad hockey.
:D