Success of Jon Stewart's Return Proves Late-Night Can Still Have A Future

"The Daily Show" on Comedy Central hardly maintained influence following Jon Stewart's departure in 2015.

Trevor Noah, Stewart's successor, lost more than 76 percent of the show's viewership. Yet defenders of Noah attributed the fall to cord-cutting and a change in cable viewing, more so than Noah's abilities. 

They noted how other late-night shows featuring Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon also dipped precipitously in viewership over the past decade.

We maintained that while cord-cutting is real, the drop in interest in late-night television had more to do with the hosts in place than viewership habits. 

Noah, Kimmel, Colbert, and Fallon are not exactly funny, the crux of the late-night genre.

We questioned how late-night could be the problem when Bill Maher and Greg Gutfeld experienced growth in popularity over the past two years. Jon Stewart's return to "The Daily Show," albeit weekly, thus far validates our perspective. 

Stewart returned to the program last week and averaged 930,000 viewers, tripling the show's norm. The expectation was that the number would drop this week, as second episodes rarely match debuts in total viewership.  

However, Stewart experienced a rather profound increase on Monday. The show averaged 1.3 million viewers, suggesting viewers not only approved of his return but told their friends to give it a try. 

For perspective, Stewart's two episodes topped every airing on CNN over the past two weeks. The top-rated show on CNN last year was "Anderson Cooper 360" with a viewership average of just 743,000. However, he still trails Fox News Channel's "Gutfeld!," which drew 2 million plus viewers the last two Monday nights on which Stewart hosted. 

Monday marked the most-watched "Daily Show" telecast since Stewart left in 2015, topping all overnight ratings for Noah’s seven-year run as host.

The increase comes after Stewart faced backlash from former corporate media allies for his dig at Joe Biden's age. Stewart acknowledged his, well, un-glowing reviews at the top of the show on Monday:

The outrage on the internet appears to not represent the true feelings of American viewers. Who knew?

Now, two weeks do not complete a story. But there are a few trends in cable that networks view as promising. Jon Stewart's return is the exception. 

Stewart's success also sends a message to other networks that cover politics with satire: The genre is not fractured. The hosts in place just aren't popular. 

Americans still appreciate humor mixed with news. To revamp late-night – CBS, NBC, and ABC ought to find someone humorous; not cringe and preachy.

A late-night host doesn't have to be moderate politically, either.  Stewart and Maher are both avowed leftists. However, they are willing to jab the other side.

By comparison, Media Research Center analyzed each of the 9,518 political jokes aired on late-night television in 2023. The watchdog found that 81 percent of those jokes targeted conservatives.

The Democrat Party – specifically Joe Biden – provides too much fodder for satirists to ignore.

Americans didn't reject late-night. They rejected what late night had become: overly partisan and unfunny.