Any Given Wednesday’s Death Was Written All Over Its Facebook Wall

When news broke Friday Night that Bill Simmons’ HBO Show Any Given Wednesday was cancelled, I was initially surprised and confused. As it turns out, Any Given Wednesday ran for as many months (four) as the show Simmons loves to goof on — The Magic Hour. If you listen to his podcast, Simmons has mentioned that the Presidential Debates and Game 7 have hurt his recent ratings. Looking back now, though, this was clearly a sign that he had heard all of the chirping about his failing show. While timing is something to consider, Bill is smart enough to know that very little TV programming these days is considered appointment viewing. If he was getting the numbers digitally via HBO Go or DVR, the show would not be cancelled right now.

So how bad was the show struggling? Getting HBO Go, DVR and On Demand download numbers are not as easy to attain as they should be. It is commonplace to see giant ‘Estimated’ disclaimers before any viewership numbers get thrown around these days. What I like to look at is the dreaded COMMENT SECTION because it is a pretty easy way to calculate if people are watching, listening or reading something.

Taking a look at Any Given Sunday’s recent Facebook gives you a peek behind the digital scenes and let’s just say it’s a lonely echo chamber.

Who is this guy?

All of these posts have one thing in common: Nobody is talking, commenting or liking these posts. The digital death nail. We should have seen the writing on the (Facebook) wall here — nobody has been watching or cares about the now-cancelled weekly show. This is not the ‘Social Media’ manager’s fault (the person who wrote the copy and posted it).

ESPN’s First Take posted this deep thought and got 233 comments, 1,400 likes and 180 shares:

So what could Bill have done differently to save the show? I am sure the week will be filled with a number of opinion pieces as to where he went wrong and what he should do next. My gut tells me that one thing Simmons has failed at is bringing up new and interesting on-air-ready talent to surround him.

Early on, he introduced us to the endearing personalities like Joe House and Cousin Sal. Since then it has been a whole lot of Rembert Browne (snore), Danny Chow (who?) and a guy named Tate who likes the Tar Heels and the Carolina Panthers (Kool). He is going to have to get a lot better at this part of the equation because he’s the type of personality who needs to surround himself with likable people.

In the bigger picture sense, the relatively quick hook on Any Given Wednesday is a massive problem for Simmons considering I am generally a fan of his and I couldn’t be bothered to watch the show.

Instead, I spent an hour of my day yesterday watching Alaska: The Last Frontier. Also, it might be as simple as Simmons just isn’t a guy meant to be in front of a camera.

Now, if you could excuse me, I’m going to log into multiple Disqus accounts and comment on this post about how awful (and great) it is.