Most of the show are previously taped and edited pieces which I imagine provides full time work for a lot of staff. The weekly taping in front of a live audience is probably not full time work for the crews involved, but I bet they are assigned to other HBO projects like Real Time and other shows to fill out their time.
Jon Oliver’s show is filmed in New York and Bill Maher’s show is filmed in Los Angeles.
I would think that the shows’ respective production companies would make arrangements for crew and not the network.
Fair enough, I can’t stand that hack Maher (stop laughing at your own jokes, it’s lame) and only see his show accidentally. Nevertheless, I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities for the crew who works the filmed in front of an audience section of Oliver to fill out their time.
Samantha Bee shoots her show in the same studio as Oliver.
Plus a fair number of other shows are shot in the same building, including 60 Minutes and CBS Evening News. I assume when the production company rents the studio they get the crew as well.
I’d have to see a specific example of what you think is a “cheap zinger” as ISTM Maher goes to great lengths to get interesting and knowledgeable guests including controversial ones who hold opposing views and lets them debate with few constraints. He doesn’t hold back when he disagrees, but that’s debate, and I’ve never seen him stifle useful debate, only to moderate the discussion when someone is going down a rathole and to remind the audience to be civil when they boo a controversial guest.
Among the things that impress me is his willingness to bring on those that he disagrees with and let them make their case. A great example was Sen. Ben Sasse, who turns out to be a pretty extreme conservative but who is intelligent and eloquent. He was able to present himself in a very positive light in his interview with Maher, and Maher seemed fine with that, and interested only in making sure facts were kept straight.
And in that connection I was also impressed with his handling of the interview with the idiot Rick Santorum that I talked about here. Santorum launched into a bunch of lies about climate change, lies that Maher was hearing for the first time and was unprepared to refute on the air except to say he had extreme doubts that any of it was true. What impressed me was that on the next show, he had done a bunch of fact-checking as I described here, and took the time to refute Santorum’s nonsense in almost exactly the same words that I had used in my own description in that first link (making me wonder if maybe Maher’s staffers read the SDMB! :D). So although Maher has a few weirdnesses and on rare occasions his “controversial” one-on-one interview guests are flat-out frauds and morons, for the most part he does have a strong affinity for facts and the truth.
Just a minor nitpick, although Maher wouldn’t consider it minor: Real Time with Bill Maher is one of the few such shows that is broadcast live – hence the name. This gives it a unique vibe and allows them to cover the latest breaking news. Then the audience can submit questions during the show which are then covered in the Overtime segment uploaded immediately afterwards to YouTube, so it’s not just live but in a sense interactive.
Hey hey hey hey - that’s The Honorable Idiot Rick Santorum…
My wife is actually the big Real Time fan because she really likes listening to the conservative guests in order to figure out how they think. I tend to watch the monologue and New Rules, because eventually one of the conservative guests will says something that makes my head explode.
Just to knit some picks: The show is broadcast live one time and then rebroadcast (not live) umpteen times during the week on HBO networks (HBO, HBO-West. HBO-2, etc) plus On Demand. So, yes, the program is digitally recorded (not literally “filmed”) for broadcast (in addition to being shown live once).
This is exactly why I decided, after NEVER having paid for news in my life (even before the internet I could find a discarded newspaper somewhere) I popped for a subscription to the Washington Post.
mc
I don’t see how having a conservative on and just letting them make their case with nothing but challenges on facts is a good thing. The whole point of a debate is to have on side say something, and then the other side rebut it. The whole point of a debate is to try and argue who is right. If the guy you believe is wrong comes off well, that means the guy you think is right didn’t rebut him properly.
To make my point clearer, let’s pick someone we know is completely wrong: a Creationist. Now let’s say you hear that, in a debate against an evolutionary scientist, the Creationist came off well. Would you not think it meant that the scientist failed to rebut him? We know that Creationism is wrong, so the scientist should have been able to rebut him. And thus the Creationist should have come off poorly, as if they were making bad arguments.
Same goes here. If a conservative comes off well, but I know that what they said was wrong, then I must have a rebuttal in my mind. But, if a liberal has presented that rebuttal, it would have shown how wrong the conservative was, and thus they would not have come off well. Hence the liberal did not present the rebuttal. They allowed something false to just be said without rebutting it. That’s not a good debate.
The only way a conservative should come off well is if they are right. But, if they are right, then why aren’t you a far-right conservative?
Just as a midsummer night pick-nict, I don’t see what your point is. My point was just that Bill Maher considers it a major feature of his show that it’s broadcast live, even though it’s a lot more stressful to do than a conventional recorded show. So to say that John Oliver is “filmed” one time and Bill Maher is “filmed” another time glosses over this crucial factor. It’s not like I’m raising some frivolous argument over the word “filmed”. Doing a live show on the air is actually something quite unique.
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that this was directed to me with regard to my comment about Maher having Ben Sasse as a guest and how well Sasse presented himself.
Your entire post – of which I just quoted the last line – is in my view overly simplistic. It comes down to the fact that politics and the issues of the day are complicated, and Sasse was able to portray an agenda that I completely disagree with in a credible way by acknowledging established facts and pushing his agenda in the “soft” and controversial areas. For instance he freely acknowledged the impact of fossil fuels on climate, unlike most of his fellow Republican lunatics, but then stated outright that he didn’t advocate for climate mitigation because it would either be ineffective or very costly. This is misguided but it’s not the kind of outright simplistic lie as in the Santorum example I gave above. Santorum is just a fucking idiot, while Sasse presents an argument that, while wrong in the view of almost all climate scientists, can still be the subject of an intelligent debate.
Agreed. I will say also that I tend to find Maher’s views on certain subjects (Islam, vaccines, Milo) reprehensible. I can’t stand Real Time, but I love Last Week Tonight and enjoy Full Frontal from time to time.
But you said that Maher just shut up and let the guy talk, rather than arguing against it. He only pointed out factual inaccuracies. So even if an intelligent debate could be had on the subject, it doesn’t seem like it was.
It sounds like Maher is just giving a far right Republican a platform, rather than debating to try and find the truth.
I’m not sure what part you disagreed with, so for fun I tried to categorize Oliver’s jokes:
- Here’s a map/graph. Ha, it’s fake, I tricked you! Here’s the real one…nope, fooled ya again!
- Yelling at an imaginary coworker or child.
- This person actually looks like this other thing/person.
- This is so bad it’s like if [convoluted pop culture analogy]
- How is this still a thing? It’s [current year]!
- This is so bad, here’s a picture of something cute.
- [Obviously false statement] That’s just a fact!
Like I said though, still better than other mainstream liberal comedy shows. Every couple months I’ll tune in to the Daily Show to see if they’re still a dumpster fire or if they figured things out – nope.
I think she could do that more easily by reading articles from them, especially since someone wouldn’t interrupt them with weed jokes. I agree with you about skipping the debates, except when it’s goons like Milo – those tend to be beautiful trainwrecks. But people like David Frum or S.E. Cupp? Hard pass.