John Oliver is on a roll.
He was recently featured in Time Magazine‘s annual 100 list, won a Peabody Award and landed a coveted interview with Edward Snowden.
To cap things off, Last Week Tonight beat fellow HBO comedic news anchor Bill Maher in both total viewers and the key A25-54 demo for the first time since it launched in April 2014.
Sunday’s Last Week Tonight beat Real Time by 18% in total viewers, averaging 1.32 million compared to 1.11 for Real Time. The difference was huge in the demo, with Oliver averaging 862K viewers, which was an +148% advantage over Maher, who averaged 347K.
It’s obviously important that Last Week Tonight aired in a significantly better timeslot on Sunday night at 11pmET, directly following season premieres of hit HBO shows Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and Veep. Real Time airs on Friday nights at 10pmET. The timeslot alone speak volumes to how much HBO values Oliver.
So, is this a changing of the guard or simply a hot streak for Oliver? While you ponder that… check out Oliver’s rant on the IRS from Sunday’s episode: