Report: ‘Donald Drumpf’ nets John Oliver ratings high
Comedian John Oliver’s scathing critique of Donald Trump has earned his HBO show its highest ratings yet, a new report says.
Oliver’s rant against the GOP presidential front-runner last month broke both online and television viewership ratings for “Last Week Tonight,” according to CNN Money.
{mosads}Oliver’s “Donald Drumpf” segment has earned a combined 85 million views from Facebook and YouTube, CNN Money reported on Wednesday. The episode has 62 million views on Facebook and another 23.3 million on YouTube.
“This is a record for any piece of HBO content,” a network spokesman said of the totals.
HBO calculates “live” television viewership by combining viewers when an episode premieres with any DVR recordings and video-on-demand plays, CNN Money said. Oliver’s Feb. 28 episode attracted approximately 6 million viewers.
CNN Money said “Last Week Tonight” averaged 4.7 million viewers per episode this season without its Trump takedown.
Nielsen’s television ratings, it said, are an average of the per-minute viewership of an entire episode.
Web views are tallied differently. Facebook counts “views” after three seconds, while YouTube measures playback after 30 seconds instead.
Oliver devoted his entire 20-minute episode last month to deriding Trump’s White House run.
He had previously refused to discuss the billionaire but changed tactics once Trump began winning early voting contests.
“At this point, Trump is America’s back mole: It may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it’s gotten frighteningly bigger, it is no longer wise to ignore it,” Oliver quipped.
The comic’s attack went viral when he suggested calling Trump “Donald Drumpf,” a callback to the businessman’s ancestral family name.
“Stop and take a minute to imagine how you would feel if you met a guy named Donald Drumpf, a litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former KKK leader who he can’t decide whether or not to condemn.”
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