Well, not really. John Oliver is actually barely ahead of Bill Maher in the ratings, according to HBO. But headlines about John Oliver require VIOLENT ACTION WORDS, as he discussed during his week off last month, so here we are, I guess. The Hollywood Reporter has the figures.
Five months in, Last Week is pulling an average of 4.1 million weekly viewers across TV airings and DVR, on-demand and HBO Go plays. That puts Oliver’s show narrowly ahead of Real Time With Bill Maher‘s 4 million weekly viewers, according to HBO.
The impressive thing about this isn’t just the fact that he’s already ahead of a long-running show on the network (in a packed Sunday night schedule, no less), it’s that he’s doing it while giving away most of his show for free. His big 15-minutes segments are up on the Internet every Monday morning racking up hundreds of thousands — and sometimes millions — of views on YouTube. Granted, a sizable chunk of those views are coming from people who don’t subscribe to HBO, but still, I have to imagine there’s at least some overlap there.
Also, as THR notes, the show is even doing well in its time slot (without DVR and On Demand viewership added), pulling in more than first run episodes of Girls. Or, in Internet speak: JOHN OLIVER IS LITERALLY DESTROYING LENA DUNHAM, too.
