Jon Stewart is heading back to “The Daily Show.
via: Deadline
Stewart will make a surprising return to The Daily Show. 25 years after starting on the show, Stewart will host the Comedy Central late-night show one night a week through the election cycle.
The news comes eight years after he stepped down from hosting the show, which revolutionized late-night television and brought through the likes of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Steve Carell.
Deadline told you back in November that one of the ideas floated for a new host was to bring in a major name to host the show through the election. Stewart will host on Monday nights, which are believed to be the show’s most watched day and gives him plenty of news from the weekend to catch up.
For the other nights of the week, The Daily Show will be hosted by its correspondents, which currently includes Desi Lydic, Michael Kosta and Ronny Chieng as well as Jordan Klepper. Last week, Deadline revealed that the show would lean into these correspondents, some of whom were in the middle of contract renegotiations.
Stewart will return on February 12. He will also exec produce every episode of the show through 2024 and 2025 to “shape” the next chapter of the franchise. This reunites him with showrunner and exec producer Jen Flanz, who started on the show as a production assistant and has been with the show for more than 25 years. Stewart’s manager James “Baby Doll” Dixon has also been brought on as an exec producer.
The reason that Stewart is able to return to The Daily Show is that his Apple TV+ series The Problem with Jon Stewart was canceled by the streamer last year as a result of clashes between Stewart and the tech company over its coverage of stories around China and A.I.
Stewart took over The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn, who had hosted the Comedy Central show from July 21, 1996. Stewart’s first guest was Michael J. Fox, promoting Spin City.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart went on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series for ten consecutive years between 2003 and 2012, before losing to The Colbert Report, a show that he exec produced, for a couple of years, and then coming back to win in 2015 in his final season.
The announcement gives a further boost for The Daily Show, which won its first Emmy under Trevor Noah’s charge last week, and comes as it has not had a permanent host for over a year.
