Reception and the "John Oliver effect"
Oliver's comedic commentary has been credited with influencing US legislation, regulations, court rulings, and other aspects of US culture; this has been dubbed the "John Oliver effect". This came from the show's fifth episode, which dealt with net neutrality, a subject that had previously been considered obscure and technical. Oliver documented problems attributed to Internet service providers and argued that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could resolve these concerns with upcoming changes to Internet regulation. Oliver then encouraged viewers to submit public comments through the FCC's website. The FCC's website promptly crashed. Internal FCC emails revealed that the clip was being watched inside the agency. The FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler publicly addressed the video.
The day after the broadcast, the FCC had received over 45,000 comments on net neutrality; in total, it received 3.7 million comments on the subject, by far the most for any issue in the agency's history. Reporters detected a shift in the FCC's stance: Before Oliver's segment, The New York Times described an FCC proposal that would leave net neutrality "all but dead", but the paper later said that Wheeler showed "a steady shift toward stronger regulation". A study conducted in 2018 found that viewers of Last Week Tonight and The Colbert Report were generally more familiar with net neutrality than non-viewers; Last Week Tonight viewers were also more likely to support strict regulation to ensure net neutrality. In the end, the FCC enacted robust net neutrality rules that classified the broadband Internet service as a public utility. Oliver was credited with transforming the net neutrality debate.
A Ninth Circuit Court judge cited a Last Week Tonight segment about the lesser constitutional rights of residents of US territories in a ruling in favour of the residents of Guam. Members of Congress credited Oliver with helping to win a vote to enforce protections for chicken farmers who speak out about industry practices, after a Last Week Tonight segment on the subject. A Washington, D.C., council member proposed a resolution in Oliver's honour after he aired a segment on the district's struggle to attain statehood. A study published in 2022 found that "calls for action" by Oliver in seasons seven and eight of Last Week Tonight raised over $5 million for charities and other causes.
Oliver maintains that he is not a journalist, but reporters have contended that his show is a form of journalism. The Peabody Awards honoured Oliver, saying his programme engages in "investigative reports that 'real' news programs would do well to emulate". One example of Oliver's investigative work is a segment on the Miss America organization, which bills itself as "the world's largest provider of scholarships for women". Oliver's team, which includes four researchers with journalism backgrounds, collected and analysed the organization's state and federal tax returns to find that its scholarship programme only distributes a small fraction of the claimed "$45 million made available annually". Oliver said that at the national level, the Miss America Organization and Miss America Foundation together spent only $482,000 in cash scholarships in 2012. As of October 2024, the official YouTube video of Oliver's Miss America segment has been viewed more than 24 million times. The Society of Women Engineers said Oliver's reference to their scholarship led to $25,000 in donations over the subsequent two days.
Oliver also founded and legally incorporated a church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, to demonstrate how easy it is to qualify as a church and receive tax-exempt status in the United States. The church was created in conjunction with a segment on televangelists who have tax-free mansions and private jets funded by millions of dollars in donations, which are sent in the belief that money given to televangelists can result in God rewarding donors with money, blessings, and by curing diseases. The next week, Oliver showed off the large quantity of donations posted to him, which included $70,000 in cash, a large cheque, and other gifts. The church's website stated that donations would go to Doctors Without Borders upon the church's dissolution.
Oliver's February 2016 segment on presidential candidate Donald Trump received 62 million views on Facebook and 23 million on YouTube within a month, and was reportedly the "most watched piece of HBO content ever". A network spokesperson said that this was "a record for any piece of HBO content". Oliver's commentary surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election received some media criticism of contributing to polarisation, including from Zac Dacis for the Jesuit America magazine, who wrote that Oliver "coddles his viewers by convincing them (as if they needed more convincing) of how right they are, how wrong they are, how many more facts they know than them". Oliver later said that his February 2016 segment "got out of hand" and expressed some regret over his coverage. In 2018 on Last Week Tonight, Oliver presented the children's book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a parody of Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of the Vice President. A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo featured Marlon Bundo, the pet rabbit of 48th US Vice President Mike Pence, in a gay relationship. During the 2023 Reddit API controversy, the major subreddits r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww, among others, protested at Reddit's API policy changes by only allowing content containing Oliver.
