Like the vast majority of generation, I am the proud owner of a Facebook account. As someone who has maintained my Facebook account over the past year, I have seen a fair amount of clips from John Oliver’s new HBO show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Oliver hosted “The Daily Show” while Jon Stewart was away directing his movie Rosewater (which, judging by the trailer, is going to be awesome). After Stewart returned to “The Daily Show,” HBO snapped up Oliver and his show, which premiered last April, has swiftly reached dizzying levels of popularity, especially with college-aged students.
There are a few reasons “Last Week Tonight” has become so popular so quickly. Obviously, it’s on HBO, and the freedoms and increased budget allowed by HBO can have very positive effects on a program. Also, while it is easy to see the influence “The Daily Show” has on “Last Week Tonight” due to Oliver’s tenure on the program, his show only airs once a week, while Stewart’s airs five days a week. This is where the structures of the two shows differ. While Stewart covers different topics every day and covers developing stories, Oliver tends to take just a few minutes at the beginning of each show to cover a bunch of stories and then spends the majority of his program doing an extended monologue explaining and quantifying a certain, broader issue.
These extended monologues are what make Oliver and his show so popular. By taking issues like student debt and net neutrality and boiling them down to a few points (normally involving outrage at some corporate sector), Oliver makes these issues both palatable and entertaining. His unflappable outrage at the denizens of corporate America are only made better by his British accent and utter disbelief at the facts he shares with the camera. And it works—it works remarkably well. Not a week goes by where I do not see something Slate, the Huffington Post or some comparable website have posted praising Oliver’s work and urging people to watch and share clips from “Last Week Tonight.” Bill Maher said in an interview last week that he would not watch “Last Week Tonight” so there would be no temptation to steal his material (Maher said this about comedic news shows in general, but mentioned Oliver specifically).
This used to be Stewart’s territory. He used to be the acerbic comic in everyone’s newsfeeds. His rants about the antics of politicians and legendary election coverage are a huge part of what made him and Stephen Colbert the most trusted sources of news in America (an actual fact). However, Stewart seems to have lost some of his shine since “Last Week Tonight” has taken off. He’s been doing pretty much the same thing for years now and viewers are starting to get tired of it. This does not necessarily mean that Stewart is any worse at his job; it just means that people seem to be looking for something new. One of the reasons Stephen Colbert maintained his popularity for so long (and got a cushy new job) is that viewers never really know what he’s going to do next. One week, he’s adopting an eagle, and the next he creates his own honest-to-goodness Super PAC. Stewart does not do those things; he reads the news and does interviews. If you watch the show today, most of the “investigative” reporting is done by correspondents, who increasingly have become a larger part of the show.
Both Stewart and Oliver are excellent comedians, and both deserve places on our televisions. But this is a transition period for their kind of news. As Colbert prepares for his transition to late-night and “Last Week Tonight” continues its ascendency, Stewart may not have any choice but to look on and appreciate the genre he helped popularize.
Is Jon Stewart still the best at what he does? Let Jake know at smasal@wisc.edu.
