The Problem with Jon Stewart's Terrible Ratings

Jon Stewart isn't funny anymore. He is no longer creative or brave. And he has lost almost his entire audience.

Perdata measurements from Samba TV, 180,000 U.S. homes watched the premiere episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart last fall. Yet the latest episode, called the "Problem with White People," drew only 40,000. That's a 78% drop.

So not exactly the three million viewers he used to draw on The Daily Show.

Highlights from the last episode include Stewart declaring that America prioritizes “white comfort” over “black survival" and calling Andrew Sullivan a racist. Other notable episodes from the past season include "Taking Responsibility for Systemic Racism," "Racism and Resource Guarding" and "Representation Matters, But It Doesn’t Solve Racism."

Jon Stewart, an elitist white man, now calls white people racist on an app. That's his job, if you haven't figured it out.

Maybe Stewart is guilty of racism himself and is trying to hide it by projecting it onto others? That’s usually how it works. If not, he's a pandering weasel.

In either scenario, his act is not resonating with former fans. The only show we can confidently say Stewart tops in the ratings is the HBO original series, Race Theory with Bomani Jones. But the two shows are eerily similar. Both hosts just sit around and call white people racist.

I'm starting to think race-baiting isn't a good business model. What say you?

Online users aren't viewing his clips on social media either. Here's how Stewart compares to other "political satirists."

Brutal.

Yet Apple doesn't care about any of these numbers. While Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock and HBO Max try to capture and hold onto every subscriber, AppleTV+ is playing with house money. On Monday morning, wediscussed:

Apple doesn’t need to meet a certain number of subscribers to appease internal goals. Apple makes so much money from its products — iPhones, MacBooks, AirPods — that its streaming business is a mere side project. Apple’s annual revenues are 12 times that of Netflix. This is why Apple put in the resources to promote the film "CODA" to be the first streaming service to win Best Picture, while Netflix has to focus on quantity.

Apple, which is trading at an almost $3 trillion valuation, just wants programs that make the company look progressive, pro-LGBT and all of the other corporate America buzzwords. Apple thinks Stewart helps in this regard.

“We are thrilled ‘The Problem with Jon Stewart,’" Molly Thompson, head of unscripted and documentaries at Apple TV+, told Bloomberg. “The series has sparked complex conversations about critical issues, and we’re proud to team with Jon for season two and beyond.”

At Apple, ratings are secondary to lectures about white people, climate change, abortion and the border.

That's why Jon Stewart went woke and lost his audience.