HBO has officially announced that Any Given Wednesday, Bill Simmons’ sports talk show, will air its final episode on November 9. This comes as a surprise to no one, including Simmons, as the ratings for Any Given Wednesday have been poor, to put it nicely, and only when HBO aired Ted 2 before Simmons did his show receive any sort of bump in the ratings.
In a press release on Friday, Simmons put the blame on himself for Wednesday failing to develop a consistent audience.
“One of the many reasons I joined HBO was to see if we could create a show built around smart conversations for sports fans and pop culture junkies. We loved making that show, but unfortunately it never resonated with audiences like we hoped. And that’s on me. But I love being a part of HBO’s family and look forward to innovating with them on other ambitious programming ideas over these next several years — both for the network and online. With that said, I want to thank the dedicated staff that worked so diligently with me behind the scenes to make this show every week — we hired so many great and talented people and I loved having them in my life. It’s difficult for me to imagine not working with them anymore.”
It is important to note, though, that this is not the end of Simmons at HBO. HBO’s executive vice president praised Simmons in the same press release and promised that the former ESPN personality would still be involved with the cable network’s sports programming in 2017. In the meantime, let us mourn the end of Any Given Wednesday by remembering whatever this was supposed to be …
