John Oliver segment on public media gets major assist from CMDI

Host John Oliver introduces his show while the cover of Josh Shepperd's book is shown onscreen. Shepperd's work on the history of public media helped inform an episode on the federal government's dramatic cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Photo courtesy HBO.

When Josh Shepperd first discovered his research interest—the historical connection between the origins of communications research and public broadcasting—he was a University of Wisconsin graduate student eager to find his voice in the academic community

Today, that voice is carrying in directions he never could have imagined, with his work prominently featured in the season finale of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, on Sunday night.

“My work is explicitly focused on democracy and media,” said Shepperd, associate professor of media studies at CU Boulder’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information. “The idea that there is interest in preserving the different types of ways that institutions, agencies and people try to build and maintain infrastructure for access and recognition is core to my research.”

As far as late-night comedies go, Oliver’s show consistently scores high marks from critics for its humor, as well as the deep dives it does on controversial topics, which this season included sports betting, presidential libraries, A.I. slop and deportations.

Shepperd consulted with the Last Week Tonight team over the course of two months, culminating in a timely episode about the federal government’s drastic cuts to public media.

Oliver’s monologue was a thorough overview of topics raised by Shepperd’s work; the producers even used the cover of his book, Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting, as an on-screen graphic during the show.

“I think Oliver and his group learned about the book through the press I’ve been doing for the book, because a lot of folks at the show have close ties and sympathies with the public media sector,” Shepperd said.

Shadow of the New Deal is notable as the first academic attempt to present communication studies and public broadcasting as historically connected media reform enterprises. It was published in 2023, at a time when uncertainty about public media’s future—not to mention poisonous criticism of journalism in general—was growing. Shadow has since won the Book Award from the Broadcast Education Association and has been a finalist or runner up for prizes from four other organizations, including the American Journalism Historians Association and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The book led to press at close to 50 media outlets, including an interview with the influential NPR show On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti, a Q&A with The Chicago Tribune, as well as a feature by Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab over the past several months.

“What I like about the book being continually recognized is that it gives this research the opportunity to resonate beyond historians,” Shepperd said. “You put in these long hours in the archives with the hope that people will consider the historical context of what you’re saying, and use that context to inform the decisions we make today.”

Since he provided so much context for the show’s team, Shepperd was asked to recommend the names of other influential voices working in this space. Among those he listed was Willard Rowland, dean emeritus of the former School of Journalism and Mass Communication, which became CMDI a decade ago.

“I appreciate that CMDI is willing to steward humanistic work that explores democracy and media questions from a historical lens,” he said. “Historical research reveals a lot—but it takes a lot of time to do, and few communication schools have historians who ask these questions from that perspective.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.