The Ringer Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessey appeared on a recent Re/Code podcast to discuss development of the site, which the former Grantland Deputy Editor said "was great." He said, "There are a lot of things that can go wrong in a launch and very few of them went wrong for us, which is nice. We feel modest about it but anytime the site doesn’t crash is a victory at a digital launch, and we didn’t crash." The process took about eight months from the decision to start the site to launch which “gave us an opportunity to build in a lot of buffers.” Fennessey said he feel there is a "real market" for consumers' desire for written online content. However, he said, "I don’t think we could have predicted how big the podcast network is going to be. … We knew we wanted a site but we didn’t know how big that site would be, we didn’t know how we would build it, we didn’t know when it would launch and we didn’t even specifically know all of the things we wanted to cover on it. Sports and pop culture was, obviously, the core of Grantland. We love those things, that’s why we’re doing them. But part of the reason we started to have the conversation was because we wanted to get a little wider. We wanted to do a little bit more and I think those desires are what pushed us towards building a bigger staff than maybe we expected, building a bigger launch than we expected.” Fennessey: “This isn’t just a web site and it isn’t just a podcast network, it isn’t just a show on HBO Go. It isn’t just [Bill Simmons'] show. It’s a multifarious product that we’re trying to make and to do that you do need to have a lot of people.” He added, "One of the things we’re going to have to figure out is how to be a professional space that people respect while not sacrificing a little bit of oddity” (“Recode Media with Peter Kafka,” RECODE.net, 6/9).
