{"id":306814,"date":"2025-11-25T22:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/306814\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:26:07","slug":"john-oliver-raises-1-5-million-for-pbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/306814\/","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver raises $1.5 million for PBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week on Last Week Tonight<\/a>, John Oliver spent the episode detailing the incredible challenges the Trump administration has dealt public media in the United States. (Namely, the elimination of $1.1 billion in funding<\/a>.) The episode ended with an auction offering a bunch of props from the Last Week Tonight archive and an original Bob Ross painting. Now, a week later, the auction has closed and it seems to have done quite well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is per Variety<\/a>, which reports that the entire auction pulled in $1.54 million for the Public Media Bridge Fund, with the majority of that figure coming from Ross\u2019 \u201cCabin At Sunset\u201d painting. The painting received 35 bids and closed at $1,044,000, making it one of the more expensive paintings from Ross\u2019 oeuvre. The outlet reports that earlier this month, Bonhams Los Angeles auctioned off three Ross paintings which earned $114,800, $229,100, and $318,000. (That being said, an original Ross from the first episode of\u00a0Joy Of Painting was listed for just shy of $10 million in 2023<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though the auction is now closed and the listings appear to have been taken down, Variety was able to document a few other highlights. Russell Crowe\u2019s jockstrap from Cinderella Man ultimately fetched $21,000, and the giant prop cabbage that Oliver married in a season 9 episode sold for $11,111. Oliver\u2019s giant golden sculpture of Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s ballsack pulled over $25,000. Five presidential wax figures were sold, with Bill Clinton nabbing the highest price and William Henry Harrison the lowest. Someone paid over $100,000 for VIP tickets and to have their photo featured in an episode of Last Week Tonight, and a trip to meet Oliver in New York raised $51,600. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver spent the episode detailing the incredible challenges the Trump administration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-306814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}