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John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

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Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#181

Post by mseebach »

a_bonobo wrote: post #94
ColinWright wrote: post #63

Georestricted: The uploader has not made this video available in your country Someone else provided a different link: https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=912968418832168&id... That returns with: Sorry, this page isn't available The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed. I look forward to the day we finally realise we are out of the transition period between not having the web at all…

Julia Reda, MP for the German Pirate Party with Greens/EFA in the European Parliament, has recently launched a campaign to introduce EU laws against geoblocking: https://juliareda.eu/2016/05/end-geoblocking/ So there's a little bit of movement, I guess?

It's unlikely that a law on geo blocking in the EU will have much effect over US content.

But besides that, it's a great idea that will entrench cable companies for a few more years and delay the transition to streaming by forcing streaming services to compete against every single cable and satellite operator in the EU at the same time (cable/sat firms aren't part of the digital single market, so they can keep carrying on). Is there content that is specifically relevant to Estonians, but for various reasons thorny to license in France? That's going to suck for the Estonians.

One might assume that Netflix (or another one of the streaming services) might grab the broadcast rights to a major sporting event (traditionally the domain of cable/satellite, and the last good reason to keep this around for many consumers) -- this proposal makes sure that day won't happen until they can grab the rights for the entire EU zone, which is obviously hugely expensive. It's not hard to imagine that it might make more sense (and be a lot easier) to grab the rights in a single, small-ish, well connected market (say Netherland) as a pilot, then leave, say, the UK for a few years later until broadband outside the cities get good enough to support at decent HD stream.

Major sporting events is of course only one such example. Plenty of content will suffer the same fate.

Another victim is license fee supported content. Especially the BBC relies on re-licensing high quality content in other european markets. This income subsidises the UK operation. If forced to not geoblock this content, the BBC will have to chose between foregoing significant licensing income, or to stop streaming altogether.

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#182

Post by Yhippa »

agentgt wrote: post #166
lujim wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I do or don't agree with him, but you don't have to be wrong to be preachy. When you're a comedian you need to be at least 80% funny. If you're 50% funny 50% preachy I'm not going to bother. Southpark use to danced this line pretty successfully.

I think the reason he sounds preachy even more so than Stewart is that he uses a lot of over the top analogies over and over again. I think he (Oliver) is funny but I prefer the Colbert and Southpark satirical model as well. For some reason satire just seems less "preachy" even though it can be just as much so.

The genius of Colbert is that the way he presented it you were defensive internally of what he was saying. Questioning what he said. Maybe it was the Republican blowhard persona that made me do that but it worked. Southpark is obviously satire so it makes it a lot easier but Parker and Stone do such a good job of presenting controversial subjects across all media formats without making it seem like they were biased in one way or another. Truly "We Report, You Decide".

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#183

Post by partiallypro »

ritchiea wrote: post #174
partiallypro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day it's a comedy show not a news show and his job is to make people laugh He and Jon Stewart keep (kept in the case of Jon) using this excuse when they get things wrong, but when they get things right they take all the glory they can get. The show(s) have to have some sort of accountability. For example Couric was just ripped for adding 6 seconds of dead air on a documentary....but that's literal…

Can you give a specific example of someone who was manipulated to make look bad on the Daily Show? Most of their interviews are with people the host disagrees with but are happy to share their views (gun rights advocates, abortion rights advocates, etc). Typically guests and participants in segments are not being manipulated. I can't say it's never been done but it's certainly not an epidemic at that show.

You're joking right? The entire interview segments are spliced and edited. Pauses are added for comedic effect, they splice different questions with different answers. It's not a single example, it's literally every interview segment.

That doesn't mean I agree with the person they are interviewing, or that that person isn't ignorant...but there is no way you can see their reporting as objective.

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#184

Post by scrollaway »

lujim wrote: post #150
scrollaway wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus. The guy creates and hosts a weekly political comedy show, researches topics, has a network spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on those topics, and you think it's a fair comparison to someone whose activism extends to "clicking the Like button on facebook". And you're the one calling his attitude "holier than thou".

Ok slow down there. They don't SPEND hundreds of thousands on those topics, they MAKE hundreds of thousands on those topics. Comedy Central/Viacom is not UNICEF and John Oliver is not a career humanitarian. They entertain people. When that is too hard they just pander to the most prominent demographic to gain viewership because that's how they generate revenue.

You're under the impression that all that matters is the final number. They're still spending that money, regardless of whether they make it all back.

Let's say I win some lottery and I MAKE $100k. I decide to SPEND $90k of that by giving it to charity. My gesture doesn't count because I'm still in the net positive by your logic.

Yes, he runs a profitable show. Nobody said he's a career humanitarian. But you said, quoting, "he has just become a left wing slacktivist". Slacktivism is a term that pokes fun at people clicking Like on facebook and signing worthless petitions then feeling like they made a real difference.

That you equate him to that is insulting and offensive to just about everybody.

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#185

Post by mcherm »

rm2889 wrote: post #171

If debt is trading at pennies on the dollar, and I owe someone 5k, what's stopping me from borrowing 50 or 100 bucks from a friend (if I dont have it) and buying back my debt? Do you need to buy in bulk? Here's an idea - aggregate debt at pennies on the dollar and sell it back to the debtor at twice the amount it'll still be pennies on the dollar and you'll make a nice profit.

That's called "settling" the debt -- and debt collectors try it all the time. Quite often it does not work.

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#186

Post by Tycho »

dvcrn wrote: post #43

As a non-american guy that has never seen John Oliver before, I found it very hard to sit through the entire thing until the end, though the payoff was definitely worth it. This guys looks to me like he's been in TV for a little too long and tries very hard to find a audience with very simple jokes (that feel kind of forced) amplified by background laughter. He has the right idea and did the right thing but I persona…

I just don't find him that funny.

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#187

Post by [deleted] »

dvcrn wrote: post #43

As a non-american guy that has never seen John Oliver before, I found it very hard to sit through the entire thing until the end, though the payoff was definitely worth it. This guys looks to me like he's been in TV for a little too long and tries very hard to find a audience with very simple jokes (that feel kind of forced) amplified by background laughter. He has the right idea and did the right thing but I persona…

[deleted]

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#188

Post by dominotw »

dvcrn wrote: post #43

As a non-american guy that has never seen John Oliver before, I found it very hard to sit through the entire thing until the end, though the payoff was definitely worth it. This guys looks to me like he's been in TV for a little too long and tries very hard to find a audience with very simple jokes (that feel kind of forced) amplified by background laughter. He has the right idea and did the right thing but I persona…

I too find it too hard to watch without cringing. He has a whole team of writers and the best they come up with is some sarcastic comments at someone's expense. Laughing at people is not 'social commentary', its lowest form of dumb comedy with horrible laugh tracks ( i thought we were done with silly laugh tracks ?)

I always thought this was a dying genre but seems like young ppl are into it?

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#189

Post by collyw »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #160
bko wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main problem with John Oliver is that he often chimes in on subjects he doesn't know anything about with folksy common sense logic that is often wrong. I remember him mocking some system for using tapes for storage on the belief that a technology that is so old cannot possibly be useful in modern technologies. In his latest clip, he mocks information being passed by Excel. How does he think things happen? Some mag…

Tape as backups are arguably still valuable, but any important information being passed by Excel is a travesty . I've worked on the quant side of things and trading securities has standard protocols (primarily FIX, but more esoteric protocols are used by some MM's). I've worked with insurance conglomerates - health information has HL7 for EHR. Purchase orders between Walmart and their suppliers use EDI. All of these…

In my last job I ended up wasting around half of my time fixing Excel / user errors (despite complaining to management multiple times about how error prone it was).

Re: John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'

#190

Post by danielford »

ritchiea wrote: post #174
partiallypro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day it's a comedy show not a news show and his job is to make people laugh He and Jon Stewart keep (kept in the case of Jon) using this excuse when they get things wrong, but when they get things right they take all the glory they can get. The show(s) have to have some sort of accountability. For example Couric was just ripped for adding 6 seconds of dead air on a documentary....but that's literal…

Can you give a specific example of someone who was manipulated to make look bad on the Daily Show? Most of their interviews are with people the host disagrees with but are happy to share their views (gun rights advocates, abortion rights advocates, etc). Typically guests and participants in segments are not being manipulated. I can't say it's never been done but it's certainly not an epidemic at that show.

Here's a news article about this and how to avoid it if you ever have to go on a program like the Daily Show.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-eve...

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