The Unlikely TV Institution That Is Bill Maher

What a difference a decade makes for Bill Maher. “Real Time With Bill Maher” has been renewed by HBO for the 2011 season.

The premium-cable network announced Thursday that the political talk show, which includes roundtable discussions with panelists from show business and politics, was picked up for 35 hourlong episodes slated to air in early 2011. The deal secures Bill Maher for two more years with HBO.

"Bill Maher is one of the most sought-after opinion makers on TV," said Nancy Geller, senior vice president of HBO Entertainment. "I'm delighted that this fearless and provocative observer will return to HBO next year."


Back in 2001, Bill Maher was booted from ABC for his controversial remarks regarding the 9/11 attacks (“We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.”). Back then, it seemed inevitable that Maher’s career was in its descent.

But this renewal makes it eight years that Maher has presided over “Real Time” at HBO. It’s the most successful talk show in the history of the network, and it has become the go-to program for liberal viewers who like seeing liberal viewpoints applauded and conservative viewpoints hissed at. Most interesting of all, Maher has attained his newfound popularity by saying the kind of incendiary things similar to what got him fired from ABC, only now on a weekly basis. He took the very thing that people presumed would bury him and used it to resurrect himself (not that Maher would approve the biblical imagery).

Like Keith Olbermann, who seemed dead in the water after leaving Fox Sports Network, Maher has remade himself into a liberal hero, the kind of commentator that gives the left a counterpart to the aggression of the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the hard right. And, like those conservative yellers, it’s clear now that he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

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