The show’s time slot, on Sunday night, with clips released on Monday morning, has made it an ideal table-setter for the Internet, giving writers and editors looking for ideas and content a natural place to start their week. HBO has been particularly liberal in its release of clips, providing the show, or parts of it, at least, an audience, and thus a cultural reach, that goes well beyond the network’s subscribers. Oliver’s show thrives within a wider dialogue, and would have less relevance if only HBO’s subscribers were seeing it.

The current situation is, then, of supposedly mutual benefit: the show gets wide exposure and HBO gets to advertise by showing off one of its most shareable, relevant shows. News sites, meanwhile, get to briefly explain an essentially self-explanatory comedy video and reap the traffic rewards. (And, to be fair, this post begins in much the same way.) Of the two parties, it is Oliver who seems to have seized the upper hand, or else to realize that he has had it all along: he gets to mock the sites that, in effect, host his show, because the cost of not sharing has been judged as too high to pass up. And Oliver stays just on the friendly side of the line: he’s not telling the Huffington Post et al to stop sharing his clips every Monday, but rather needling them for doing it so eagerly.

win-win-win?

I'm not sure Dr. Oz would see this as a win....

It's a win for everyone who is worthy of winning.