The Last Week Tonight is a weekly half-hour comedy news show hosted by John Oliver on HBO. It uses humor and satire to discuss current political and social issues in the US. The show is well-produced thanks to HBO's support. Oliver delves into topics in great detail and encourages public debate on social media. Though his language is profane at times, the show has achieved popularity and quality guests. It effectively raises awareness on important issues through a combination of rational information and emotional comedy.

1. SOCIAL JOURNALISM
CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS

2. TODAY ON THE MENU
The Show Itself
→Production
→Organization
The Message
→Content
→Appropriateness
→Effectiveness
→Social feedback
A Short Video

3. THE SHOW ITSELF
Production
Organization

4. PRODUCTION
LENGTH AND FREQUENCY
20-30 min. - Once a week, every
Sunday
MEDIA USED
TV (HBO channel), internet videos on YouTube, on
the website of HBO and on the official pages on the
social networks (Facebook and Twitter)
THE PROGRAM is transmited on air on HBO TV channel in the
United States. It also has international transmission, in
countries like Brazil, Australia, and United Kingdom.

5. THE HOST of the show is John Oliver, who “narrates” the
show using an informal language, describing serious daily
events in a funny and sarcastic way.
TYPE OF MESSAGE
Mostly rational, but the main element is
humor, so it has emotional elements as well.
OBJECTIVES
The aim of the Last week tonight show is to
present a satirical look of the news of the
week, of politics and current events.

6. TARGET GROUP
The show is mostly concerned about
events that happen in US and is more
oriented around American public
TYPE OF WORDS
Funny and informal but sometimes also
inappropriate
COMMUNICATING VIA PHOTOS
Daily photographs or funny
photoshopped, sometimes inappropriate
images

7. The main financial resources for the show are
private and are provided mostly by HBO, an
American premium cable and satellite television
network. HBO is the creator of the show and the
official website of The Last Week Tonight is
connected to the HBO’s website.

8. THE SHOW IS ORGANIZED IN THE FOLLOWING WAY…
The show begins with A QUICK RECAP OF THE WEEK in
which there is a line of events that happened in the week
before. After that the show continues changing the news
to different (but always time-relevant) topics.
Around the middle of the show comes the moment of
THE MAIN STORY TONIGHT, which is the most important
and the longest story, which is not about a latest event,
but usually something that has a global importance.
Oliver can rant about whatever issue he wants for
however long he wants, although usually between 12
and 16 minutes
The last part of the show is usually a feature called
HOW IS THIS STILL A THING?. It describes some
banalities in life that are still practiced by some people
but are actually wrong or offensive, such as: Dressing
up as other races, Columbus day, Ayn Rand’s
philosophy, The Commonwealth Games etc.

9. SEASONALITY
FIFA World Cup Eurovision Contest
India’s Elections
Thanksgiving
Pumpkin spice in autumn
Most of themes used in
the show are based on
current events and
pressing socio-political
issues. Seasonality is
seen when recurring
events are discussed and
often relate to present
issues concerning those
events.

10. CONS & PROS
- +• Only once a week
• Short episodes
• Less concern about
issues outside US
• Doesn’t have official
website
• Very funny and amusing
• Good social network
communication
• Relevance in the events
presented
• Well sourced explanation
• Guests that confirm the
story

11. IN OTHER WORDS
a
The Last Week Tonight starts just as any classic talk show does,
starting in a cheerful way with a song called “Go” by Valey
Lodge. But the moment of fun and nice music gets interrupted
by the sudden and serious start of the last week’s recap, when
for a moment the audience is able to understand that this is
not just a fun show, but “news as they should be”, news that
show us the real picture behind the events.
Oliver is not an ordinary TV host, he is a comedian as well.
Mixing those two things you get satire.
“A good satirist is someone who hits a point, cares about
something, and wants you to care about it,” -Jonathan Gray,
professor of media and cultural studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Oliver may present himself as a funny show host, but he is
actually doing an excellent job in the field of social journalism.

12. THE MESSAGE
Content
Appropriateness
Effectiveness
Feedback

13. SOCIO -ECONOMIC
The most important objective of this type
of journalism is raising awareness, helping
people sympathize and understand the
problems of those who are neglected, but
also get aware of their own situation.
Ferguson case
Prisoner’s rights
Lottery
Student Debt

14. POLITICAL
The show focuses on domestic
political issues in the US and
occasionally likes to poke on
current international topics.
John Oliver is known for
making fun of political
and royal figures in his
show. He is also active
on the social media with
provocative tweets and
Facebook posts.

15. RATIONAL VS EMOTIONAL

16. TESTIMONIAL
Actors Guests
Keith Alexander,
US army general
Stephen Hawking
Bill Nye, activist
Right Said Fred
Sarah Silverman, a
comedian
Jeff Goldblum
Sesame Street
MusiciansJournalists

17. ARE THE IMAGES, THE TESTIMONIALS AND
THE LANGUAGE APPROPRIATE?
 The narration and the comments are mostly
sarcastic and they are without censure
whatsoever. The language is no different when
it comes to commentaries about some famous
person and it may be considered offensive.
 Same is the situation with the images. Given
that the show is presented on HBO, Oliver has
the full freedom to express himself and to put
images of any kind.
 The testimonials, whether they are as
interviewees or as actors, support his research
or description about some event. They are
usually famous characters which helps the
audience get convinced in his statements.

18. NO CENSORSHIP

19. THE LAST WEEK TONIGHT COMPARED TO OTHER
SHOWS
Other than The Last Week Tonight, Oliver is
famous in the US by his work on The Daily
Show with John Steward. On April 2014 he
started hosting his own show, pretty similar to
other satire political shows but getting even
better with each new episode.
The Daily Show (with John Steward) and The Colbert
Repost (with Stephen Colbert)
air Monday through Thursday night for 22 minutes,
whereas Oliver airs only on Sundays for a full half-hour
on HBO. Those eight minutes make the difference.
According to Day, Oliver’s lack of commercial breaks
allows him to tackle issues “newsmagazine style,”
unlike Stewart and Colbert who must cut to
commercial two to three times per episode. HBO does
not air commercials, so Oliver can discuss student debt
or net neutrality at greater length.
- The Harvard Political review

20. DOES HE REACH HIS TARGET?
on YouTube
on Facebook
The show has seen steady
growth of followers on the
social media. John Oliver
addresses socio-political
issues that mostly concern
the US, hence the larger
proportion of followers in
North America.

21. DOES HE ENCOURAGE A PUBLIC DEBATE?
John Oliver likes to encourage a public
debate or a public action on the social
networks. In some features, like the one
dedicated to the geckos that were sent to
space for an experiment, he made up a
hashtag #gogetthosegeckos and
encouraged everyone to visit the official
page so they can personally text Vladimir
Putin about ideas about the space geckos.

22. FEEDBACK
An interesting example of feedback to his show was
the PR action taken by Pom Wonderful, a soft drink
company he once criticized on air. The sent him a
letter containing humour and sarcasm, as well as
including a refrigerator of Pom Wonderful.

23. COMMENTS
“I see Oliver as the next logical extension
of the genre,” said Dannagal Young, an
assistant professor at the University of
Delaware who studies the use of political
satire. Oliver, she said, “is going beyond
traditional satire to give audience
members specific directives that allow
them to take action on the issues he
deconstructs on the show.“

24. CONCLUSIONS – THE SHOW
The show is well structured and long enough to cover topics
in great detail through humour
It has excellent production and success thanks to HBO with
its financial and media support

25. CONCLUSIONS – THE MESSAGE
The content is of high quality and often detailed, his
humour is intelligent but understandable by all
 The show is abundant with profanities and swearing
to a greater extent than comparable shows
His show guests and appearances testify to the quality
popularity he has achieved
The show has a very specific effort to get the message
across and stimulate public debate, through the use of
social media in particular: twitter hashtag #
The overall feedback is generally positive and taken
with humour