Jon Stewart returns Monday as host of 'The Daily Show'
Jon Stewart returns to late night.
Mr. Stewart will take charge of Comedy Central's “The Daily Show,” the show he hosted with great success from 1999 to 2015, one night a week through the 2024 presidential election, the network said Wednesday in a surprise announcement. Mr. Stewart's first show is Feb. 12.
'The Daily Show' has been without a permanent host since Trevor Noah resigned at the end of 2022. Stewart will also be a producer on all episodes of “The Daily Show.” Other episodes of the show are hosted by a rotating lineup of the show's news team.
“We are honored to have him return to Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' to help all of us make sense of the madness and division roiling the country as we enter election season,” said Chris McCarthy, a senior executive at Paramount, the parent company of Comedy Central.
Mr. Stewart appeared to acknowledge his return to “The Daily Show.” in a social media post shortly after the news was announced. “Excited for the future!” he said, making a joke about college football.
Mr. Stewart's relentless focus on politics during his 16-year “Daily Show” program, unusual for late-night programming at the time, transformed him from a promising comedian into one of the country's leading political and media critics. Mr. Stewart had his detractors, and the viewership of “The Daily Show” lagged behind that of others at the time, but his influence was outsized — and long-lasting.
Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, two “Daily Show” correspondents who rose to fame during Mr. Stewart's tenure, had their own late-night shows, which they still host. And like Mr. Stewart's “The Daily Show,” their shows also have a laser focus on current events — almost always with a left-wing bias — and helped reorder the late-night landscape in the process.
Mr. Stewart taped his final episode of “The Daily Show” just hours before the first Republican debate of the 2016 election cycle, an event that shattered the ratings and formally introduced Donald J. Trump to the country as a future politician.
After he resigned, Mr. Stewart signed a contract with HBO that yielded little. In 2021, he created an Apple TV+ show, “The Problem,” which ran for 20 episodes in total and often struggled to gain traction. Mr. Stewart left in October 2023, shortly before the show's third season was set to go into production, telling employees that he had disagreements with Apple executives over future show topics, including hot-button issues like China and artificial intelligence.
Stewart's return to cable television — albeit only on Monday nights — will send a jolt to the late-night world, which has been rapidly losing viewers and cultural relevance in recent years. The comedy talk show format has also been difficult to replicate in an on-demand streaming world.
He will also face a very different and much more controversial political landscape. Mr. Stewart's definition of “fake news” during its “Daily Show” years meant something very different than what it does today.
Hosting a show for just one night a week also poses challenges for a format that relies on viewers' comfortable late-night habit of tuning in. And like many cable networks these days, Comedy Central is once a hotbed for comedic talent and prime-time series like “Key & Peele” and “Inside Amy Schumer” have a much weaker lead-in lineup compared to 2015.
Still, “The Daily Show” has remained relevant even after Mr. Stewart's departure in 2015. (Since Mr. Noah left The Daily Show as host at the end of 2022, the network has brought in guest hosts to fill the void.)
Last week, Mr. Noah's version of “The Daily Show” won the Emmy for best talk show, beating Mr. Stewart's Apple TV+ series, Mr. Colbert's CBS show, Jimmy Kimmel's ABC late-night show and Seth Meyers' “Late Night.” It was widely considered the biggest shock of the night, and confirmation that “The Daily Show,” at least in the eyes of Emmy voters, still resonates.
After the show won the Emmy, former correspondent Roy Wood shouted from the stage, “Hire a host.”