HBO Makes It Harder to Watch John Oliver for Free — Part of a Strategy

Oliver tweeted regarding the switch and made it clear he doesn’t want it: 

Nonetheless HBO PR is quite clear about why it’s doing this: It wants people to look at the current on Max, the WBD-owned streaming platform, the place it makes money. When it performs on YouTube, the place HBO runs it with out ads, it doesn’t make any money.

That is the official HBO assertion: “When Closing Week Tonight With John Oliver premiered on HBO, the consolation of watching on Max didn’t exist, so YouTube allowed versatile viewing for the first story along with promotional publicity. We are literally delaying that availability and hope these followers choose to look at the whole current on Max.”

Some context: Since Discovery boss David Zaslav acquired what was as soon as known as WarnerMedia virtually two years up to now, he has been making an attempt to cut costs and improve revenues virtually any methodology he can, sometimes in methods through which anger prospects or media chatterers. Like permanently shelving completed movies or licensing a couple of of WBD’s best-known shows and movies to rival streamer Netflix.

So hoping that making “Closing Week Tonight” just a bit more durable to see completely free matches pretty merely into that pattern. Even when his experience disagrees.

The switch moreover runs counter to the best way through which TV networks are treating comedy #content material materials mainly. As I’ve well-known sooner than, back in YouTube’s earliest days, Big TV execs freaked out when their stuff showed up on YouTube, but now they’re very comfortable with it, and also you’ll watch stuff like “The Daily Current” and “Saturday Night Reside” completely free on-line, in a short time after their preliminary airings.

One large distinction: “The Daily Current” and “SNL” run on ad-supported networks, so there’s a methodology for these networks to generate some kind of revenue after they air on digital platforms as properly — even when these revenue streams are rather a lot smaller then these they generate on normal TV. Nonetheless HBO is ad-free, and the group runs its stuff on YouTube the equivalent methodology. So there isn’t any obvious resolution to get one thing larger than promotional value when Oliver’s current runs there.

Proper right here, by the best way through which, is “The Daily Current’s” most vital monologue from Monday evening time, which I’ve by no means watched however nevertheless am wanting forward to seeing:

And whereas I’m at it, I must say that I have watched this week’s “Closing Week Tonight” (I watched it on Max/HBO the day after it aired), and it’s pretty worth watching, significantly for the stunt Oliver pulls at the end (don’t click on on that hyperlink till you need a spoiler).