Last Week Tonight aired on Sundays at 11pm, and had a total of 30 episodes in season three. The season was generally well-received, winning four Emmy Awards, a Television Academy Honor, and one WGA Award. The show continued to release the main stories of each broadcast on its YouTube channel after each episode aired. Episodes in the season were credited with influencing US law and culture, a phenomenon dubbed the "John Oliver effect". Prominent instances include the main segment of episode three, titled "Donald Trump", which set an HBO viewership record and received widespread media attention; and the main segment of episode fourteen, about debt buyers, in which Oliver forgave almost $15million in medical debt for 9,000 Americans.
Production
Season three aired from February 14, 2016, to November 13, 2016.[1][2] The season was produced by Avalon Television and Sixteen String Jack Productions;[3] it aired on HBO in the United States at 11pm on Sundays.[4]Tim Carvell, John Oliver, and Liz Stanton were the executive producers on the season. Writers included Oliver, Carvell, Kevin Avery, Josh Gondelman, Dan Gurewitch, Geoff Haggerty, Jeff Maurer, Scott Sherman, Ben Silva, Will Tracy, Jill Twiss, and Juli Weiner. Paul Pennolino directed the season.[3][5] The team also included researchers with journalistic backgrounds at The New York Times Magazine, ProPublica, CNN, and MSNBC.[6]
Promotional material for the season displayed various negative blurbs criticizing Oliver or Last Week Tonight, like a quote from The Wall Street Journal that the show "makes people dumb".[1][7] Continuing an idea from season two, Oliver said that the Last Week Tonight production team wanted to create longer segments that went more in-depth into topics. This differed from season one's idea of having many short segments to cover the week's news.[8]
Last Week Tonight intentionally did not cover the 2016 United States presidential election in season two; Oliver called it a "massively overblown occasion" and explained that the team decided to concentrate on "other things that seemed a bit more relevant last year".[6] At a press event for season three, Oliver explained that they may discuss the electoral processes and the candidates, but that the "daily dramas of the campaigns" would not be covered; he explained that "there’s plenty of other people who will do that".[9] On the topic of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump, Oliver said that Last Week Tonight would not cover his campaigning, but expressed interest in discussing "what is happening underneath";[6] however, many episodes of season three contained segments about the election and Trump's campaign.[10][11]
Reception
Critical reception
The third season was generally well received. Critics continued to praise the show's comedic but still in-depth segments on current events.[12][13]Variety commended Oliver's persona as host, describing him as having a "beautifully calibrated, extremely articulate rage".[12] Some critics said that Oliver's quick humorous interjections had "lost its charm", according to The Daily Free Press,[14] but others found that these quips were what made the show compelling.[15] The season's third episode, "Donald Trump", received widespread media attention;[16][17][18][19] many writers criticized the segment's satirizing of "Donald Drumpf", a spin on Trump's name using that of his ancestors, for being xenophobic.[16][18]
Ratings
Last Week Tonight received an average 5.6million viewers in season three, which HBO said was boosted by its digital streaming services.[20] The show continued to release the main stories of episodes on the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel.[21] "Donald Trump" set an HBO viewership record, according to a spokesperson from the network; a month after airing, it had 23.3million views on YouTube, 62million views on Facebook, and an average gross television audience of about 6million, totaling about 86million views.[22][23] In April 2024, HBO announced that the full episodes of seasons one through eight would be released on the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel.[24]
Coverage of an issue by Last Week Tonight has been credited with influencing US legislature and culture, a phenomenon dubbed the "John Oliver effect".[27] Episode three of the season covered Donald Trump's career and 2016 presidential campaign.[17] Immediately after airing, web searches for "Donald Drumpf" went viral. By March 1, the date on which the "Super Tuesday" primaries were held, Google Searches for "Donald Drumpf" had surpassed those for two of Trump's opponents.[28] Other media also started reporting on Trump's "short fingers" shortly after the episode's broadcast,[29][30] prompting Trump to write a Twitter post on March 1 which he stated that he was not aware of any mockery of his "short fingers".[31] After Oliver promoted a Chrome extension that automatically replaced the word "Trump" with "Drumpf", multiple spinoff extensions were created; as a result of a spinoff extension, Wired magazine accidentally published multiple articles replacing Trump's name with the phrase "Someone with Tiny Hands".[32] In addition, episode fourteen covered debt buying in the United States, a practice that Oliver criticized for allowing companies to manipulate people with extreme medical debt.[33] At the end of the episode, the host personally bought almost $15million in medical debt and forgave it for 9,000 Americans.[34][35] The following year, a Reddit user claimed to have received a letter explaining that their debt had been paid off due to Oliver's philanthropy.[36]
