HBO's "Any Given Wednesday" is averaging 247,000 viewers for the premiere episodes to date (six shows), "slightly more than half" of those tuning in are in the 18-49 demo, according to Anthony Crupi of AD AGE. But those viewership figures only factor in live+same-day (within a 24-hour period) and "only tell about 10% of this particular ratings story." HBO sources said that the show "improves on its original live deliveries by a factor of 10 when DVR playback, encore telecasts, on-demand views and HBO Now streams are baked into the mix, bringing the average weekly total audience to around 2.4 million viewers." HBO Chair & CEO Richard Plepler suggested that host Bill Simmons' "inherent value may well lie beyond the bounds of linear TV." Crupi noted no one who has followed his career closely "can question Simmons' digital bona fides; in its first seven months of operation, his new eponymous podcast was downloaded more than 50 million times." But the initial attempts to repackage the "Any Given Wednesday" segments for a digital audience "have been met with decidedly mixed results." In aggregate, the 32 clips on the show's YouTube page "have been viewed 4.61 million times, although half of those impressions were generated by a single snippet." The premiere episode's "infamous 19-f-bombs-in-five-minutes Q&A" with Ben Affleck "has been viewed 2.34 million times since it was uploaded to YouTube in June." Take the "excitable Deflategate conspiracy theorist out of the picture and the average 'Any Given Wednesday' clip is averaging a little more than 73,000 views." By comparison, since the show launched June 22, new clips housed on the "Last Week Tonight" YouTube page "have been viewed no fewer than 81.6 million times" (ADAGE.com, 8/5).
