Jon Stewart Staying At 'The Daily Show' Through The End of 2025
Jon Stewart Staying At 'The Daily Show' Through The End of 2025
The entire news team will be hosting an election night special that will no longer close out the deal
Oh hey, it’s the penultimate Monday before the 2024 United States presidential election, an event that was set to be the point at which Jon Stewart would finish his weekly (mostly-Monday) stint as host of The Daily Show. It was where he returned in February after 9 years to the show he hosted from 1998 to 2015 following the departure of his successor, Trevor Noah in December 2022 and the 7-ish months the show spent in guest hosts in 2023, which includes the news team he works with and hosts the remainder of the week that he doesn’t. Now, it seems like Comedy Central has enjoyed this arrangement, as Stewart has signed on through December 2025, keeping it in place, and kicking the can of whether the show will ever choose a singular permanent host to then.
The show’s regular correspondents, Ronny Chieng, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta and Desi Lydic will continue to rotate hosting duties Tuesday through Thursday each week, meaning one of them gets the three remaining episodes of a week. The show won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Series for the second straight year, eight months after the streak starter. Ratings have improved greatly since the show’s year began with Stewart’s return, averaging more than 1 million viewers (including seven days of Nielsen-measured delayed viewing, but excluding streaming) for the past three quarters, almost doubling the numbers being put up post-strike in the final trimester of 2023.
“Jon’s incisive intellect and sharp wit make him one of the most important voices in political and cultural commentary today,” said Chris McCarthy, the president/CEO of Showtime & MTV Entertainment Studios currently serving as Paramount Global Co-CEO. “His ability to cut through the noise and deliver clear-eyed insights is exactly what we need, which is why we are thrilled to have him leading The Daily Show for another year.” Stewart said in his own statement, “I’ve truly enjoyed being back working with the incredible team at The Daily Show and Comedy Central. I was really hoping they’d allow me to do every other Monday, but I’ll just have to suck it up.”
Of course, Stewart wasn’t going to be around these 8+ months of leadup without being present for the actual coverage of Election Day. For it, The Daily Show goes live with an hourlong special, The Daily Show Presents a Live Election Night Special With Jon Stewart: Indecision 2024: Nothing We Can Do About It Now, one of the few times the show has gone beyond its half hour time slot since reverting to it following Noah’s departure a 45-minute time slot, though most of the beholders since seem to be Stewart-hosted episodes. The special will simulcast on MTV, Paramount Network, TV Land, CMT, Pop and Logo. The news team will be providing updates and analysis on the presidential election, as well as “tips on surviving the post-election breakdown of society,” in the show’s own words. Previous coverage included the Democratic National Convention week of episodes filmed in Chicago. Doing so for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee the previous month was scrapped due to the assassination attempt on Trump.
Jen Flanz is the showrunner of The Daily Show and executive produces with Stewart and James “Baby Doll” Dixon. Former correspondent Roy Wood Jr., who quit before the show came back from the WGA strike displeased at the way the host picking was going, now hosts the American version of British panel show Have I Got News for You on CNN, featuring Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black as team captains. It premiered on September 14.
