Bill Simmons / The Ringer

Hard to argue with this assessment of Bill Simmons and his new media platforms:

There’s no buzz. 

How long until HBO cancels Bill Simmons? It’s gonna happen, hell, the new regime scrapped the second season of “Vinyl” after the show had already been picked up. You see the ratings sucked. And TV lives by statistics, they trump friends every time.

There is no buzz. Am I alone in being surprised by that realization? I admit that I've watched all four episodes of Any Given Wednesday (Simmons' HBO Show) but other than people wondering if Ben Affleck was drunk when he ranted against Deflategate - there's been no buzz about the show. None.

My guess is the HBO gives Simmons plenty of runway because his audience is for the most part technically savvy and the type HBO wants signing up for HBO Go. But would anyone be surprised if HBO cancelled his show and instead asked him to work on half-hour 30 for 30-type sports documentaries instead?

I listen to his podcast regularly and I've added Keepin' It 1600 to my rotation as well but could care less about the half-dozen or so other podcasts Simmons' group has launched.No interest whatsoever! And The Ringer itself? I admit that I've never even been to the site. Just as damning is on Twitter I've never even seen a link to any articles I felt were worth my time Tweeted out. Just no buzz whatsoever.

To be fair - I'm going to add The Ringer to my blogroll and give it a fair chance to win my traffic (not like that's going to make or break their site). I've just found myself surprised this morning that after all that speculation about what Bill Simmons would do next after ESPN - there has been no actual buzz for his new media platforms.

No buzz at all!