3 ms·
I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is. That Last Week Tonight really is legacy media because it's owned by the same company that owns CNN
by msandford 11y ago
I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is. That Last Week Tonight really is legacy media because it's owned by the same company that owns CNN? In that case, the Washington Post isn't legacy either, because it's owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon, which is slowly destroying brick-and-mortar stores.
I think what I meant was "Last Week Tonight isn't beholden to politicians" (but I didn't get that out quite right) which affords them the luxury of pointing out how stupid a lot of policies are. They don't need to call $politician up for information or a quote or whatever, so it doesn't matter if $politician doesn't like the show and won't play along.
I think the show will continue for quite a while due to excellent ratings, and those ratings are largely because they're doing the actual work that reporters are supposed to do. I think a lot of legacy newspeople confused what you did in order to do your job with the job itself. In other words, that the ends were the results they were after (having an article, getting on TV, etc) rather than having something important enough that there was no alternative but to write an article or what have you. Getting published was the goal, not having something worth publishing.
- walterbell 11y agoOne theory for the editorial independence of LWT on HBO is the absence of advertisers who could pull their advertising in response to content. CNN could create an LWT competitor without political guests, but they would remain beholden to CNN advertisers.
- msandford 11y agoAn excellent point actually. Similar to the funding model of ordinary people buying papers; there's no one single big sponsor that can get a story shut down.