The Future of John Oliver’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ Will Be a Stress Test for Paramount | Analysis

Netflix dropping out of the Warner Bros. Discovery deal has raised a massive question in the world of late night: Will John Oliver stay around long enough to meet his new business daddy?

Oliver has a long-running joke about HBO’s revolving door of owners, but now it’s serious. The future of “Last Week Tonight” will be a test of what Paramount Skydance truly wants out of its new assets, and how much creative freedom it’s willing to give to its talent. If it truly wants HBO’s prestige and loyal audience, it makes the most sense to leave the perennially Emmy-winning Oliver alone. But if David Ellison’s company is as concerned with appeasing Donald Trump as many critics fear, Oliver’s cancellation would be undeniable proof of its intentions.

And all of these concerns are coming about during a year when Oliver’s contract with HBO is coming to an end.

“I don’t think they care [about ‘Last Week Tonight’s Emmys]. Look at Colbert and what happened there. Yes, the show is expensive, but he has a level of prestige that, in the past, would have immunized him for everything,” Anne Libera, associate professor at Columbia College Chicago as well as director of Comedy Studies at The Second City, told TheWrap. “They’re actually not looking for prestige, they’re not looking for an audience. They’re looking for control.”

We’re living in a time when late night comedy is undoubtedly under fire. Shortly after Skydance announced its acquisition of Paramount last July, CBS announced it would be ending “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” That cancellation, which will take place on May 21, was reportedly due to financial concerns though many (including Colbert) still believe the move was politically motivated. Months later, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel following criticism from conservatives and the Trump administration after a joke Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk. Six days later, Kimmel was reinstated on the air. Both Kimmel and Colbert have been repeatedly criticized by Donald Trump for mocking him.

And when it comes to mocking Trump, few are more aggressive than Oliver. In 2016, Oliver’s “Donald Drumpf” campaign became so popular that it generated its own lengthy Wikipedia page. Last year, he also likened Trump’s administration to “authoritarianism” and called Trump a creep who liked to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein.

Oliver also hasn’t held back in his criticism of Paramount, the company that is now positioned to be the owner of HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. On Thursday, Netflix dropped out of the bidding war over WBD, and on Friday Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery announced their merger is a go. But while the bidding war was in full force, Oliver ran an expose of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, calling her appointment “at best, irresponsible and at worst, deeply misleading,” and called Paramount a “soulless, ethically bankrupt ass-kissing corporation” before yelling “Please stay the f–k away from us. You are not my real business daddy, and you never will be!”

“Clearly there’s going to be a heightened scrutiny on the programming,” J. Christopher Hamilton, assistant professor at Syracuse University as well as a practicing entertainment attorney, told TheWrap. Hamilton pointed to the increased focus around CBS News and “60 Minutes” that took place after David Ellison, son of Trump supporter Larry Ellison, took control of the company. “I think we already know what the consequences will likely be if you deviate too far from whatever the boundaries that are set for them.”

One late night writer described the impending Paramount-WBD merger as “undeniably grim.” Inside CNN, there’s heightened anxiety and speculation about the future of the news channel, along with whether others in the WBD universe who are more political, like Oliver, would last in a Paramount takeover.

To put it bluntly, Oliver is a live wire. And that’s not a great thing to be if you want to keep your job right now. 

HBO and representatives for Oliver did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

The value of “Last Week Tonight” 

Because “Last Week Tonight” has always been an HBO show, Oliver has always abided by different rules than his broadcast and basic cable peers. Sure, that means he can say “f–k” and make inappropriate jokes about Adam Driver, but it also means that the success of his series isn’t as dependent on its ratings. 

The value of “Last Week Tonight” largely comes from its critical reputation and awards performance. Over the course of its 13 seasons, the series has secured 32 Emmy wins and 73 nominations. The show has won so many Emmys, awards commentators believe it’s led to two Emmy rule changes designed to give other series a shot. 

The series has also garnered a loyal following — something that’s especially valuable to HBO Max right now. During the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on Thursday morning, WBD heads David Zaslav and JB Perrette emphasized the importance of long-running shows like “The Pitt” and the upcoming “Harry Potter” series to the streamer’s strategy. 

“The thing that HBO did quite brilliantly is to monetize people who are passionate about certain kinds of content. They were not looking for as many people to pay a small amount of money. They were looking at a smaller group of people who were going to pay a lot of money,” Libera said. 

You can see that in Oliver’s YouTube trends. Though Oliver’s YouTube videos lack celebrities and are far longer and informationally dense than those of his late night peers, the videos of “Last Week Tonight” generally generate more views per video than other late night shows. 

For instance, during May 2025, the “Last Week Tonight” YouTube channel generated 57.4 million views compared to “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” which generated 81.1 million views, according to data from Fabric Media. The difference is that “Last Week Tonight” averages 10 to 25 videos a month (around 5.7 million to 2.3 million views per video during May) while “The Tonight Show” averages 150 to 200 videos a month (around 540,000 to 406,000 views per video). 

YouTube is a massive part of the strategy around “Last Week Tonight.” Each week, the central deep dive of the episode is uploaded onto the platform. It’s such a notable part of the series that HBO’s decision to postpone YouTube posts until later in the week, in a bid to boost HBO Max and HBO viewing of new episodes, received a great deal of backlash from both fans and Oliver himself, prompting HBO to return to its original strategy of posting segments on YouTube the day after they premiere. That swift backlash also points to the power and popularity Oliver has on the network.

Paramount hasn’t been as aggressive on entertainment

As much criticism as Paramount Skydance has received for potentially influencing the direction of its news division, it should be noted that the Ellison era hasn’t been as hands-on when it comes to the company’s entertainment offerings. 

“South Park” previously portrayed Trump as a monster who literally raped people to death, and Paramount Skydance renewed the series for 50 more episodes in a deal worth $1.5 billion. Two days after that deal was announced, “South Park” returned with an episode that ruthlessly mocked Trump, departing from its regular style to animate Trump’s actual image and literally putting the President in bed with Satan. 

And though “The Daily Show” hasn’t exactly held back in its criticism of Trump or its parent company, Comedy Central renewed the series through 2026, keeping Jon Stewart as its Monday host for another year. Even the cancellation of “The Late Show” wasn’t as brutal as it could have been. Colbert and his team were told about its axing 10 months ahead of the show’s final episode, giving the series more than enough time to plan a finale for fans and staff time to line up their next gigs.

Threats on the horizon for John Oliver

We don’t know what the future of “Last Week Tonight” may be, but we do know that Oliver doesn’t plan on changing his show. During an interview in January on Trevor Noah’s podcast “What Now,” Oliver said, “It feels like we’re just going to do what we do. They’re going to — whoever ‘they’ are – is going to have to realize either you ignore us … or you’re going to have to take us around the back of the woodshed.”

Oliver has good reason for his casual attitude. The late night host has survived two corporate mergers and three business daddies. Time Warner served as HBO’s parent company from 2014 to 2018 before AT&T acquired what became WarnerMedia in 2018. The telecommunications company then sold it to Discovery Global in 2022, creating the Warner Bros. Discovery we fret about today.

Neither Libera nor Hamilton think that HBO’s new owners will outright cancel “Last Week Tonight.” But they also weren’t hopeful that the show would remain on the air for long.

“My guess is they keep him for a period of time and attempt to censor him in some weird way that will allow them to make a big deal out of him choosing to leave them,”  Libera speculated. “So he will bite the hand that feeds him, they will make a big deal out of it, and then they will have an excuse to make a big deal out of ‘We don’t tolerate that … We’re such big free speech advocates that we don’t tolerate people who have free speech.’”

Hamilton’s prediction was even less dramatic. “What will happen, more likely, from my point of view, is the internal pressures will get so intense, people will leave,” he said, pointing to the resignations that have happened at CBS or Anderson Cooper’s departure.  

“I expect all of these guys, to some degree over the next few weeks, to mention the potential change in ownership. But I do think there’s going to be a sunset on that if they want to keep their jobs,” Hamilton said.

One thing’s for sure: Everyone will be tuning into Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” to see what Oliver has to say.

Additional reporting by Michael Calderone and Adam Chitwood.

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