HBO announced they will now force people to wait four days before sharing on YouTube the highlights from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Of course, fans of the show online were pointlessly indignant. Their fury demonstrates exactly what the problem has become for most entertainment creators and news organizations alike online … people expect content to be free.
In response, HBO candidly share that they hope this move will entice more fans of the show to subscribe to Max so they can watch the full show in its entirety. Good for them. I love the message they are sending to their critics:
You don’t have a “right” to watch entertainment we paid to produce for free and we don’t have an obligation to give it away. If you love the show, please pay us $9.99 and you can watch it as a subscriber. Or shut up and wait.
As I have written before when it comes to other forms of media – if you love to watch or read something, you should be willing to pay for it too.
