so cnn wants content about how young people suck? they are already losing market share and they want to kill it even more? bold move. when bill maher had on john meacham and julia ioffe, they made fun of maher and his obsession with wokeness very early on in the show. that was one of the few shows where maher couldnt rant about young people and wokeness because he was with guests who made it very clear that they think people who overly focus on that stuff are ridiculous

Uh oh, someone just mentioned /r/television's favorite 2 words.

People still tune into Bill Maher?

I stopped watching a few years back when he had Rand Paul on and not only didn't call him on any of his bullshit but was actually quite chummy with him. It wasn't entirely because of that, but that was kind of the last straw.

As opposed to redditors that can’t avoid the subject in a a generic television subreddit.

They are going to shoehorn every dogshit discovery Channel personality into everything. Get ready for Guy Fieri cameos on House of the Dragon.

Whatever it is would probably be more entertaining then there normal shitty primetime opinion shows

Yeah, as much as I hate him, he has his audience. And it's not small.

Bill is a smug sob for sure but I’ll be damned if I don’t tune in on Fridays.

The format and guests are incredible - where else can you see Killer Mike and Tom Morello duke it out with journalists and politicians? Ben Affleck and Sam Harris getting in a slap fight? Salman Rushdie scolding Mos Def?

People bitching about Bill getting too chummy with right wing folks are beyond daft. The whole point of the show is having conversations no matter how different the personalities, beliefs, and backgrounds of the guests might be. Bill has some terribly stupid and uninformed gripes about millennials and Gen z, but he’s never trying to silence them - he usually has at least one millennial or Gen z-aged guest on his panels.

There’s nothing interesting about watching likeminded people jerk each other off in an echo chamber or the same pundits spewing their party’s talking points on “debate” shows.

Yep, I've been watching him since his politically incorrect days, and I still watch now. There's a few things about him that annoy me, but he's usually right.

It is smaller than it was 5 years ago. His ratings have been in decline for a while.

CNN, Fox News and all major “news” outlets are going to bring in/ trying wild things but when it comes down to it most people growing up don’t want to watch anything from them or cable in general.

CNN is also considering time travel to go back to when Maher was last relevant

Well that goes well in step with their new owners at Discovery, who want to go back to 1996 when linear cable programming was the priority. Not streaming.

Yeah, I do and he has a sizeable audience. Its a very good political/comedy talk show all things considered. Obviously not perfect, but literally nothing is.

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• His opening monologue is generally okay. He'll usually have one good joke and fuck up the delivery on another, but its all around fine.
• His 1v1 interview is highly dependent on the person being interviewed. When its a politician/activist I usually like it, but sometimes he'll have an actor or musician and I struggle to not skip over it.
• The round table discussion typically the best part of the show. Its usually either a mix of political points of view, or all left points of view. If its all left leaning, Bill usually plays contrarian which is what gets reddit's knickers in a twist and causes fox news to say Bill Maher said XYZ against wokeism!!!11!!!. The diverse discussions are typically the highlight of the show where you can truly see diverse opinions on a subject, which is something I struggle to find anywhere else.

Is Bill a smug ass hole that hates younger generations? Yeah. But then again if you're reading this you're on reddit, which is full of smug ass holes that hate the older generations.

they should put his youtube show on cnn might have to stop getting high with the guests though

Bill Maher and talent really shouldn’t be in the same sentence unless… is smugness a talent?

Bill Maher constantly finds a way to learn the wrong lesson from every bit of news he hears. A neoliberal grandpa who loves to smell his own farts.

My mom only pays for hbo so she can watch his show and I get a free log in to hbo max.. interpret that how ever you want by I think that guy sucks. His podcast is remarkably worse than his show.

Fist bumping Milo Yiannpolos wasn't enough?

It gets tiresome watching him shame his audience when they don't like his joke.

That definitely would have done it too, but I don't think I saw that episode lol

This comment doesn’t make sense at all. Especially with the way Discovery pushed their streaming app and the amount content it has on it. This was even before the merger with Warner.

is /r/television getting too woke? Angry redditors share their thoughts

the him and Jeff Ross podcast is one of the most awkward videos I've ever seen

> The diverse discussions are typically the highlight of the show where you can truly see diverse opinions on a subject

If you think discussions between corporate lobbyist #1 vs. CIA agent vs. conservative troll is a diverse set of views then you're incredibly sheltered

Agree with everything you said. No comedian can satisfy every particular audience member all the time--nor should they try, or it is even possible.

Colbert was brilliant on the TCR, skewering conservatives while pretending to be a conservative, even getting invited to the Whitehouse Correspondents' Dinner to roast Bush in 2006. But now? His monologues are decent, but usually not anywhere as good as his stuff from 15 years ago.

Trevor's best work were his editorials on race, but I skipped almost every celebrity interview where the guest was just oozing "I'm so happy to be me".

Anybody who watches Maher, or any other comedian who does political satire is going to find things to disagree with. As you said, he is generally right ("But I'm Not Wrong") on most issues, but it's fine to disagree with each other, but so many comments here, and elsewhere, want lockstep agreement.

The hate he gets from people is really astounding. It's like they want him to check every single one of their own particular 100 boxes, or he is the worst ever, but most attacks against him are ad hominem ("He's just a cranky old man"), and not specific criticisms of his views--which I have, certainly--but just goes to show that most people hate him without even knowing what he says. It's the whole, "I didn't read the article, but let me tell you what the author gets wrong".

>Bill has some terribly stupid and uninformed gripes about millennials and Gen z

Very strongly agree with most of what you said, but I will disagree with this.

Bill cites Millennials' desire to complain about everything, but their voter participation is about 25%, which is abysmal, and so many issues would improve if they would just fucking vote.

Also, every generation finds fault with the ones that come after it. Just wait until Millennials are parents, and grandparents and watch them complain about the younger generations.

Every generation makes some things better, and some things worse.

>TCM, for example, intends to make use of popular personalities from Food Network, HGTV and other venues to create discussions related to classic movies.

TCM is like the only pure entertainment cable channel left. Still has hosts, a curated schedule, is still showing what the channel set out to show when it launched. And I know Zaslav is going to screw it up. It'll probably be showing 6 hour blocks of Guys Grocery Games in a couple years.

Oh, it was much worse than a fist bump, Maher actually called him "the new Christopher Hitchens"!!!

Christ

> Just wait until Millennials are parents

Most Millennials are in their thirties now.

Exactly. I think people forget that you can disagree occasionally and still like someone.

Okay, so their kids are, at most, 8 or 9 but probably younger? They are still mostly cute. Wait until they are teenagers, and watch Millennials complain about the younger generation.

Please don't say that. I know you're right, but TCM is one of the few remaining channels I actually enjoy.

I have a real love/hate relationship with Bill.

He's a smug, spoiled, contrarian who now is just an old man who yells at clouds.

His show though? Hit and miss. He'll get some great guests and it will be very interesting. Sometimes his New Rules will hit it out of the park.

Other times, his show is boring and infuriating for weeks upon weeks. I probably wouldn't watch him if my dad didn't watch Politically Incorrect back in the 90's.

I mean, who knows how much longer linear cable channels will be around. But something will be lost if TCM just becomes a category with an A-Z sorted list of old movies on DiscoveryBO Plus or whatever.

You mean like all television ratings??

>make it 1997 again by magic or time travel

Preach! 👏

When I’m 63 do you know how much shit I’m gonna hate? I don’t because it hasn’t been invented yet, and my social world view hasn’t been shook yet but I’m sure there’s gonna be some stuff.

What’s wrong with Guy???

>I’m sure there’s gonna be some stuff.

Self-entitlement is something that has existed for probably 50,000 years.

Imagine being of the first few generations that learned to make fire. Their kids grew up thinking fire was just an everyday thing, and probably let the embers go out on too many occasions, only to have Mom & Dad come home and be like WTF, why did you let the coals go out?

Because we can just get them going again.

I wasn't gone all day hunting wooly mammoth just so that you could let the coals go out. Back in my day keeping the coals going was the most important thing.

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When a generation introduces a technology or a better implementation of an older tech, the next generation grows up not understanding the importance of the technological leap that was made. It has always existed for them, so they don't value it as much as the people who mainstreamed it.

Whatever tech people born in the past 20 years mainline is going to be taken for granted by their kids, and in 2060 the people born in 2000 are going to look at kids born in 2030 as being entitled asshats.

Seems like the ending editorial is still the meatiest and funniest content in the current show, even when the takes are too hot. The roundtables are kinda trash now because whoever books the talent has not caught up with the type of people actually driving the conservation these days, the panels often feel surprisingly corporate for how edgy a show it is supposed to be.

> There’s nothing interesting about watching likeminded people jerk each other off in an echo chamber or the same pundits

Yeah! Like Bill Maher would never do that. /s

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Hey CNN! What if you went back to just being journalists? I bet you'd be surprised.

Yeah, how dare they talk about the article.

This guys an absolute knob gobbler.

Bill Maher seems like type of the guy to genuinely like the smell of his own farts.

Lots of people like things that you don't.

He was right about Trump and his goons, but his takes on anyone younger than him are laughably bad

The usual punching bag of "anybody who wants to change things beyond the arbitrary progress I've taken for granted is the worst thing I can imagine."

To be honest it would just be better that these corporate media giants fail. They are mainly toxic and beholden to corporate interests/ad revenue over anything else.

CNN, or media in general needs to learn. We do not want your opinions or talking heads. Especially from people who didn't grow up with technology and just can't under it fully. It happens, it happens everytime we enter a new age.

I don't religiously consume his show but I've found it easier to just listen to it as a podcast. Hbo releases an audio form of each episode.

Due to how this stuff works, even if the rest goes bankrupt, FOX News is still going to generate enough profit to keep going.

He is still pretty popular among the self-described centrist crowd.

strong voice of reason, would be a good choice for them

I'd like to see all of the media giants fail but like you said, Fox will probably find ways to continue through fear and manipulation. Ideally there needs to be populist media organizations which focus on journalism that provides a backbone for the working class and isn't afraid to critique structures of power no matter which side holds the power. With the current corporate structure, it is the antithesis of working class values. One of the few media organizations trying to go the grass roots route is The Lever.

Yeah, he's smug. And he can be very reductive, especially when going for his punch lines. But I don't think the "he hates young people" thing really works.

He's a liberal, grounded in enlightenment values. He isn't is a progressive, grounded in oppressed/oppressor dialectic of critical theory that has trickled down the youthful online crowd.

And that's okay. It may not be "right," as if something is right in that way, but it is a legitimate intellectual position. Pretending that it isn't is pure close-mindedness. We live in a world profoundly shaped by enlightenment thinking that has given us some bad shit but also some very good stuff.

Heaven forbid young people take an interest in politics. No, better that they ignore it and let things get worse.

As long as you can’t differentiate between browbeating people with different opinions and “taking an interest in politics”, you aren’t going to help make anything better.

As a progressive person, I do enjoy how he calls out the left without fear. But also sometimes he’s wrong and it’s annoying to listen to him go on about.

But I do think it’s good to have someone who isn’t afraid to make enemies of the people who would otherwise support him.

I thought the whole point of cancelling the docuseries and other shows was to get back to “real news”? And now they want a comedian on prime time? Talk about lack of vision.

Such a weird comment when Bill Maher's show is about politics

Yeah “New Rules” is the best part.

Huge fan of Maher, so I'd prefer him to stay far away from CNN. His show only works on a more mature content filled network. Maher is definitely a national treasure and really speaks to the majority of Democrats that are moderate and don't have much patience for the Progressive left. Not that he's not fairly left wing himself, but more like a Midwest or even New England Democrat.