Would HBO Really Consider Dropping Bill Simmons?

The HBO-Bill Simmons marriage hasn’t even really gotten past the honeymoon stage yet, but that hasn’t stopped some media outlets from wondering if it will last.

After Bill Simmons had his now famous acrimonious departure from ESPN, it seemed that everyone was curious about where he’d go. Maybe to Yahoo! Sports, some guessed, which would have made sense if sports were all he cared about.

However Simmons has always had interests beyond his old Sports Guy roots, which made his eventual landing at HBO a perfect fit. There he’d get to produce documentary films like ESPN’s 30 for 30 series and find a home for both his sports and pop culture pursuits.

So far, those have mostly taken the form of Any Given Wednesday, Simmons’ weekly show (we’ll let you guess which night it’s on). And while the bar is considerably lower when it comes to the number of viewers that makes a show like that a success these days, it’s hard to say Any Given Wednesday is clearing it, drawing less that 200,000 live viewers as of late.

Yes, DVR, streaming viewers, yada yada yada. The fact remains that the show doesn’t seem to be any kind of draw, something Decider explained in great detail earlier this week. That site thinks the show might not be long for this world. But then it goes a step further and wonders if HBO would “cut him loose.”

It’s an interesting question, and despite Simmons’ non-sports dabblings might be better viewed through the lens of the acquisitions that Fox Sports has made in recent months. That network is experiencing some of the same issues, spending big money on the likes of Colin Cowherd and Skip Bayless and so far having little to show for it in terms of eyeballs.

Fox Sports may feel that having these personalities on their team provides benefits that can’t be measured by ratings alone. Heck, it almost has to at this point.

It’s probably even easier for HBO to feel that way about Simmons, given that he’s more versatile than the hot take machine that is Bayless. Some of his 30 for 30 stuff was fantastic, his podcasts remain popular, and he’s still an entertaining writer when he chooses to revisit his original craft.

Decider ultimately concludes that HBO should just find something else for Bill Simmons to do instead of Any Given Wednesday and not give up on him just yet. We concur, but the fact that we’re even thinking about it is a sobering thought.

Home/HBO