Last Week Tonight with John Oliver free on YouTube in certain countries

February 28, 2024 11:49 PM

Good News! Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is now free on YouTube in countries where no one owns the streaming rights, with plans to upload the entire archive. This includes all of Latin America, a lot of Asia (except China, India and most Arab countries), all of Eastern Europe, plus France, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. If you want to check for sure, you can do so on this map, or you can just try watching the latest episode. And then you can join in on Fanfare discussions of the show.
posted by Kattullus (9 comments total)

But sadly in the countries where Max has the streaming rights, they don't post the full episode, and while they used to post the main story the morning following the episode's premiere, now they're waiting until Thursday to post it, which may undercut the show's impact a bit. Those clips tend to get from two to five million views on Youtube, and their pieces on Elon Musk and the Israel/Gaza situation got over eight million.

HBO really doesn't know what they have, when I watch the show on Max it keeps trying to convince me to also watch Real Time with Bill Maher, which is a really different audience....
posted by JHarris at 1:09 AM on February 29 [18 favorites]

It works in Japan. HBO content is connected to the U-Next streaming platform here but it doesn't bring everything over. Mainly the fictional series like SitC and GoT. And of course, "Larry's Midlife Crisis" (the Japanese title for - well, I'll leave it for people to guess). And some documentaries.
posted by LostInUbe at 1:41 AM on February 29 [3 favorites]

HBO really doesn't know what they have, when I watch the show on Max it keeps trying to convince me to also watch Real Time with Bill Maher, which is a really different audience....

I have said repeatedly that I would pay a surcharge to HBO to have a setting that allows me to completely ignore Maher exists. And even in this era of sharply rising streaming prices, I stand by that assessment.

That said, I don’t fully blame them for holding back LWT segments on Youtube. This ain’t PBS; they are paying for this show to attract subscribers and, to be honest, I’ve always been surprised at how much of the show has been available prior to this year. At any rate, I don’t know if waiting to post the main story will have a huge impact on ultimate impact: the whole point of LWT is that most of these stories are evergreen. These are stories that are always present in the background and as a result don’t get classified as “news” so they don’t receive much attention.

If anything, spacing out the release might increase the attention they get, instead of flaring up for a few days and then fading again. It’s the same reason a weekly show can hold a greater amount of attention, over time, than a show that drops all at once. (Not saying this is the rationale, but … it is a thing).
posted by thecaddy at 4:15 AM on February 29 [10 favorites]

Now, can we get the whole series archive on Max, too?
posted by Servo5678 at 4:47 AM on February 29 [4 favorites]

Not available in my part of Europe - I think HBO/max is distributed through Sky here.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:29 AM on February 29

Thanks for sharing! It doesn’t seem to be available in France either, even though it’s on their list, the World Map checker has it greyed out.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:26 AM on February 29

Damn, that's annoying. Apparently it was announced three days ago that Max would be rolling out in France later this year, so they may have pulled that.
posted by Kattullus at 1:15 PM on February 29

Thanks for this post, Kattullus! This is total news to me and I am thrilled to hear it.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:28 PM on February 29 [1 favorite]

And the new episode is online.

This has really revolutionized my Monday lunchtime.
posted by Kattullus at 12:59 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]