John Oliver tackled the Trump administration’s defunding of public media on the last “Last Week Tonight” episode of 2025, detailing how the decision to eliminate $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting earlier this year had a particularly severe impact on local radio and television stations. So Oliver and “Last Week Tonight” are playing a supporting role. The show has launched an auction website, John Oliver’s Junk, with 65 items currently up for bid. That includes an original 1987 painting by the late PBS icon Bob Ross, “The Cabin at Sunset,” which sold for $51,000 at press time.
The idea for the auction actually came from the Bob Ross Foundation, which recently raised $662,000 by auctioning off three original Roth paintings to support public broadcasting.
Oliver announced the “John Oliver Junk” auction on Sunday’s show and said the auction would run until November 24th. “We’ve actually accumulated a ton of strange artifacts over the years on this show, so we can definitely put them up for auction to raise some much-needed funds,” Oliver said. “Last week, we were proud to announce that we will be holding our first-ever public media-sponsored auction tonight. This is the real deal!” Proceeds will go to the Public Media Bridge Fund, which is helping local public broadcasters temporarily find new funding in the wake of the CPB closure.
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If you’re a fan of “Last Week Tonight,” you’ll recognize some of the items up for auction. These include Russell Crowe’s jockstrap (worn by Russell Crowe in the major motion picture ‘Cinderella Man’ and later purchased on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ during Season 5 of the show as part of Crowe’s ‘The Art of Divorce, an auction in which Crowe sold personal items to pay for his divorce’)’ and ‘Mrs Crowe’. “Cabbage Oliver” (“John Oliver’s on-screen wife marries in an on-screen wedding officiated by Steve Buscemi. Part of ‘Last Week Tonight’ Season 9 segment about AI-generated art in which John marries a cabbage in the studio”).
Also included is a large gold-plated recreation of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s testicles (“a sculpture of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s scrotum, part of the Season 12 section of the Presidential Library”), wax statues of five U.S. presidents, and gold Adidas sneakers (“the gold sneakers that John Oliver promised to wear in the Season 2 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver if scandal-plagued FIFA president Sepp Blatter resigns”).
Among other things, a trip to New York to meet Oliver. You’ll also receive a “case of Cabernet Sauvignon, the wine that was made over the years on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” a chance to appear in a photo over Oliver’s shoulder during the episode, and two VIP tickets to a live recording of the show.
Oliver’s “Community” colleague Joel McHale also appears in the episode, which features a flashback to when McHale hosted a pledge drive on a Seattle PBS station in 1999 that kept people talking about “Mr. Bean.” To commemorate the occasion, McHale signed a DVD set of episodes of Mr. Bean, which is also up for auction.
Oliver spent much of Sunday’s episode discussing the plight of public broadcasters: “Public media has been truly innovative in reaching underserved audiences. It was public television stations that first invented subtitles in the 1970s. The nation’s broadcasters offer programming in Haitian, Creole, Navajo, Vietnamese, and many other languages. But as you’re no doubt aware, Congress voted this summer to eliminate the $1.1 billion they’ve been broadcasting so far.” Allocated to fund public broadcasting for two years. ”
Oliver addressed how Republicans have attacked public media almost since the moment President Johnson first signed the bill creating the CPB, and explained that criticism of “liberal bias” within public media is actually something else. “Although there can be honest debates about bias in the media, whether liberal or not, I would like to point out that what conservatives claim as “liberal bias” is often meant to imply that America has a long history of racism or that homosexuals exist.” It’s hard to interpret these criticisms as anything other than bigotry, and yet such arguments are being used to justify zeroing out the CPB’s entire budget. ”
Oliver also noted the irony that with budget cuts, local stations will have to rely more on national content originating from major markets like New York, instead of producing important local community programming. “Ironically, the more local station budgets are cut, the more they may become dependent on programming produced in urban echo chambers. As the executive director of one California station said, the local stuff that’s so important to people will likely disappear.”
Oliver noted that public radio and television stations support important local investigative reporting in areas where there are few other news outlets. And “Last Week Tonight” has relied on public reporting for its work on subjects such as HOAs, juvenile justice and lethal injection.
“Public media can be a means to disseminate important information in communities with limited broadband or cell phone service,” he said. “Public radio may be the only way to broadcast alerts for missing or at-risk people, and it can also be important during emergencies like hurricanes.
“Frankly, given the importance of public media, it’s always been a little strange how little funding public media receives. Here in the United States, we’re an outlier worldwide in how little federal funding public media receives. Even before these cuts, federal spending was less than $1.60 per person, compared to countries like Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which spend almost $100 or more,” he added. “And research shows there is a positive correlation between the strength of public media systems and the health of democracy… Ideally, we would work on long-term fixes to how the CPB is funded, and instead of giving Congress the power to take away funds every two years. , would definitely enact some sort of tax or license fee that could be funded. That’s what people have been advocating for since the CPB was first established. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world right now.” And until that happens, public media is in a dire situation right now. ”
