Jon Stewart Retiring from the Daily Show

[Julius Seeker]

It's been a long time since I watched anything more than clips of the show, but Jon Oliver seems like the ideal successor host. The issue with that is that he has Last Week Tonight, which may actually be a better format for the media of today given its stronger and more unique segments, and the fact that people under the age of 60 are shifting away from scheduled TV at a very fast rate.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31396423

[Eric]

End of an era.

[kali o.]

Shows how much I watch cable tv nowadays...I learned from that article Letterman stepped down. I had no idea!

[Zeus]

Shows how much I watch cable tv nowadays...I learned from that article Letterman stepped down. I had no idea!

You never saw it on Colbert?

[Shellie]

sad

We tend to watch John Oliver's show over Jon's now though.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, I think that's part of the problem: John Oliver just does a much better job of explaining complex subjects to his audience in 12-15 minute segments. Meanwhile, The Daily Show entertains itself with ambush interviews and fake reporter-on-site jokes. Some of the content is good, but mostly, it's useless filler. I end up just watching the first 10 minutes and then turn it off.

I think Jon realizes that it's gotten this way, and figures it's best to step down. Maybe somebody else will carry the show in a better direction.

Hell, he might even work on some more documentary directing.

[Replay]

No, Sine, that is not "part of the problem".

Jon's ratings are still through the roof. He MADE John Oliver.

The problem is that Jon has been doing this for sixteen years; and when the cameras are off and the hilariousness stops, that means he's still poring through the absolute bullshit of Fox News and other mainstream cable sources eight hours a day for material to mock. And wading through endless cable news bullshit is depressing and bad for the soul.

Jon did a skit once mocking Fox's fearmongering; they were talking about Hell, and Jon replied that having his staff watch Fox's bullshit eight hours a day means that he was already there.

We all laughed; but I have had a great deal of cause to think about that one; none of us know, as we do not know him, but I have to think sixteen years of wading through Fox's bullshit and exposing its lies and watching them remain as popular as ever would wear on anyone's soul.

[Replay]

As has already been alluded to - my guess is that he wants to direct, as that's what he did with his last "vacation" from the show.

Directing is very, very hard. You can't do it and maintain a worldwide talk show empire at the same time, as a general rule.

[Flip]

I watch both the Daily Show and Last Week Tonight and yeah, they are two completely different formats. Last Week Tonight always has one relatively long in depth investigative journalism segment that is really well done and then no interviews or anything. Oliver carries the whole show.

I agree with Sine that Stewart's show is best in the first 10 minutes. I can do without the skits and interviews, but sometimes they have someone interesting on. Me and the GF eat late, so its almost always what we watch while having dinner.

[Replay]

For what it's worth, apparently the market thought literally 1.5% of Viacom's TOTAL market value was attributable to Jon:

http://fortune.com/2015/02/11/viacom-jo ... aily-show/

[Eric]

Trevor Noah will be replacing Jon.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/trevor-noah



Funny kid, really green though.

[Julius Seeker]

Keep in mind that his main occupation has been radio host, rather than standup. Although I really enjoyed his act, even though it was PG. The fact that he managed to have a unified 8 minute segment is impressive, not many comics do more than about 3 minutes at most; or if they're like Louis CK, they'll do a bunch of short ones and then bring stuff up from their previous segments to vaguely relate them all.

The sandwich order was brilliant.

Listen to this one:


His roast comedy, it's awesome: