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The Ringer |OT| Formerly Known as Binge Mode

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Please rate this appearance from the perspective of someone who actually enjoys Rap's appearances, but got tired of the "stickman" thing. Need to know what I'm in for on my commute.
 
DopeToast said:
New episode with Michael Rappaport. He's miserable, as always.
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Don't get how this guy invaded sports lately. I liked him in GTA 3, but otherwise he sucks.

edit: at 31 minutes he excitedly talks about Joakim Noah being an under the radar stickman. An underrated cocksman. Got it from his dad because apparently he was a world class stickman also.

This fucking guy.
 
*Nothing* can be worse than the Glazer pod. I found the first couple of Rapaport pods pretty entertaining, but I can't really view him the same way after he got into a Twitter feud with a producer of the Le Batard show a couple of months ago and came away looking incredibly childish.
 
AstroLad said:
Oh man haha come on it can't be worse than Glazer.
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That one was pretty bad, too, yeah.

Honestly I was enjoying this Rappaport one for most of it and thought that maybe he was toning it out down a bit, but then he kicked off the entire segment about famous stickmen and all that. That was funny the first time way back, but it's so old at this point.

Simmons seemed like he was genuinely trying to get Rappaport to stop going after LeBatard. That was uncomfortable.
 
I've been enjoying the coverage of the playoffs for the most part. I really like Chris Vernon on the NBA pod.

I thought I'd like the Sal podcast because he's great and him and Bill picking the lines is my favorite podcast of the NFL season. But I don't really care about the lines, I care about the analysis that comes after. This new podcast seems to be just for people who actually want to put money down on games, which is totally fine, just not for me. I did only listen for like 25 minutes though, so maybe I'm judging unfairly.
 
Agree on the Sal podcast. It's just way too in the weeds and Sal without Bill as a foil is just kind of boring. I guess if people say good things about it I'll give it another shot but unsubscribed for now.

I actually enjoyed the Rap pod though clearly I'm in the vast minority there.
 
Yeah Sal is great and I love listening to Bill and Sal talk about gambling, but I couldn't get through the Sal podcast. I'm not that into gambling.
 
Wow that's pretty crazy. They must be making pretty good bank on ad revenue because he said that their big staff is going to continue to grow and regardless of opinions on him Wilmore is a pretty huge name for a seemingly smallish operation like ringer. I think he's been on fire with pods recently too, which helps. Though I don't really branch out in the network too much, but I have been reading the site more often.
 
AstroLad said:
Wow that's pretty crazy. They must be making pretty good bank on ad revenue because he said that their big staff is going to continue to grow and regardless of opinions on him Wilmore is a pretty huge name for a seemingly smallish operation like ringer. I think he's been on fire with pods recently too, which helps. Though I don't really branch out in the network too much, but I have been reading the site more often.
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There was that pretty candid interview with Bill from a while back, where he seemed to imply that they were able to cover all their costs with the podcast network's revenue alone.
 
Yeah Rapaport like once every three months or so is the right dosage. I feel like trying to keep up with him would be exhausting but as a sometimes-guy he's refreshing.
 
Steelyuhas said:
There was that pretty candid interview with Bill from a while back, where he seemed to imply that they were able to cover all their costs with the podcast network's revenue alone.
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I imagine that's because Bill is taking waaay less in salary than he did at ESPN, and instead probably has a large equity stake in the company (along with the other investors).
 
I don't know that this proves they're making money or anything.

The pods are easy, decentralized. Bill gets a cut, the host gets a cut. It's such a small time and monetary investment each week to do a podcast. That's how Keeping in 1600 was, and then they were a megahit and then they decided to cash in on their own.

I'm sure the Ringer is way cheaper to run than Grantland was because he has none of the luxury, high-profile writers; there's no long-form reportage, it's all just clickbait "reactions" so it's obvious he's saving on the travel costs; etc.

TangoAlphaLima said:
I imagine that's because Bill is taking waaay less in salary than he did at ESPN, and instead probably has a large equity stake in the company (along with the other investors).
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Yup. Bill probably accounted for a huge portion of Grantland's budget. Here, he's effectively paying himself through the HBO deal.
 
Anyone listen to the Aziz podcast? Bill keeps bringing up his dead friend. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it got a bit awkward for a minute.

Also I didn't know the dead friend was the Humble Brag guy. I loved those columns on Grantland.
 
It's not awkward to bring to the dead friend but Simmons was just crass about it. And then mentioning that he lost those wrestling figures? Not smart. Otherwise a very good podcast. I should watch Master of None.
 
Looks like a big loss of autonomy for Bill (50/50 split seems like a lot just so they don't have to host their own website and find their own advertisers), but regardless, so glad they're moving off Medium. What a fucking awful platform.

Vox has some really slick (if bloated) design. really, anything's a welcome change from Medium.
 
Kind of bummed that Simmons takes such pride in his employees working crazy hours. Pumping out a story on Memorial Day when you should be on vacation or frequently working late into the night is not healthy.
 
Gigglepoo said:
Kind of bummed that Simmons takes such pride in his employees working crazy hours. Pumping out a story on Memorial Day when you should be on vacation or frequently working late into the night is not healthy.
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I remember hearing him say that one of the ways in which he feels like he let Grantland fail was not having immediate, timely reporting. He's said that when a game finishes, his site needs to have media up and ready to go talking about everything. If they wait until after the holiday they'll be irrelevant on that topic until something else pops up.

You gotta figure the staff know that going into it. Kinda like retail work. It sucks working the holiday but they'll get it made up to them sometime a couple weeks later with some time off.

Everyone seems to love working for Bill so I'm not too worried about how they fit in extra hours.
 
whytemyke said:
I remember hearing him say that one of the ways in which he feels like he let Grantland fail was not having immediate, timely reporting. He's said that when a game finishes, his site needs to have media up and ready to go talking about everything. If they wait until after the holiday they'll be irrelevant on that topic until something else pops up.

You gotta figure the staff know that going into it. Kinda like retail work. It sucks working the holiday but they'll get it made up to them sometime a couple weeks later with some time off.

Everyone seems to love working for Bill so I'm not too worried about how they fit in extra hours.
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Honestly this is actually one of the things that actually got me going to theringer again. A big game would be over (that I'd usually have missed, b/c work) and they'd put up an article really quickly that was actually pretty much everything I wanted -- pithy commentary, gifs of the highlights and silly plays, etc. (I'm sure there are other places that did/do this anyway but I'm not huge into devouring sports commentary, pretty much just always been an ESPN & Simmons guy.) I definitely hope it's not miserable for his employees but for the most part they do appear to be having fun with it, or at least that how it comes across in the pieces.

Hope they find success too. Always hard to know as the show (which I hated, as I predicted) was really abruptly canceled, but they've been hiring up so I'm not sure if the doom & gloom in the article is quite on point (although I certainly wouldn't deny it either). Vox is quite a good fit regardless so hopefully that gives them a few more years to get their feet under them.

Have said this probably a couple times on the thread, but really feel like the quality of the podcasts and website have really been on the uptick since the show went off.
 
The website has gotten pretty damn good. I just hope Simmons gives his employees extra time off when they work during their vacations. I'm sure it's tons of fun writing for The Ringer but it's not cool exploiting people. That's sadly how media enterprises operate, though.
 
Don't know that I've ever heard Bill fanboy out over anything non-Boston as badly as with McEnroe. I lost count of the "you're my favorite ever" mentions.
 
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