Posted in: CBS, Comedy Central, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: cbs mornings, comedy central, jon stewart, stephen colbert, the daily show

The Daily Show: Jon Stewart on His Return, What's Changed & More

Jon Stewart has been making the rounds to discuss his return to Comedy Central's The Daily Show tonight - here are some of the highlights.

With only hours to go until he makes his (hopefully) triumphant return to Comedy Central's The Daily Show – well, at least on Monday nights –  Jon Stewart has been making the interview rounds to cover a wide range of topics. Obviously, the ten-ton questions that most folks have for Stewart gravitate around the topic of why he's returning to the show after so long. First up, we have some highlights from what Stewart had to share with CBS Mornings hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil & Nate Burleson during an in-studio interview. From there, Stewart checks in with showrunner Jen Flanz and co-executive producer Zhubin Parang for The Daily Show Ears Edition – and then, we wrap things up with a late-night reunion between Stewart and Stephen Colbert during a special Super Bowl LVIII edition of Colbert's CBS talk show.

"I very much wanted to have someplace to unload thoughts as we get into this election season. I thought I was going to do it over at – they call it Apple TV+. It's a television enclave, very small. It's like living in Malibu. They decided they felt that they didn't want me to say things that might get me in trouble," Stewart shared, shedding some light on both why he returned to The Daily Show and why he & Apple TV+ parted ways on The Problem With Jon Stewart.

Stewart on Wanting to Have Something More Than "Influence": "I don't know about hoping to have an influence, but I'm hoping to have a catharsis and a way to comment on things and a way to express them that hopefully people will enjoy. But as far as influence, and you guys know from doing this, just about everything I had wanted to happen over the 16 years that I was at 'The Daily Show 'did not happen if you were hoping for influence. And I think I've learned that post-'Daily Show' … I don't really view it as 'I really want to have an influence on this issue, this election,' things like that."

After joking, "Generally, I will be doing it with choreographed dance moves," Stewart addressed how he would approach reaching out to a younger generation of viewers – and voters – this time around. "Information is information, and if it's good content, people will find their way to it. I think the worst thing you can do is pander to this idea that young people absorb knowledge and information in an entirely different way," he explained.

"If you want to be present in this world, you have to be present in this conversation, and you have to be as relentless and as tenacious as the counter-narrative that's being formed. So much of the information that we see now is weaponized … and it keeps taking exponential leaps. It's not just the election. It's AI. It's the way that we've militarized all our conflicts. It all ties together to one larger idea, which is the form of government we love so much is an analog – I don't want to say dinosaur – but it is analog, and the world now moves at an increasingly infinite digital pace, and reconciling those two things, I think, is the challenge of the moment for people," Stewart would go on to share with Flanz & Parang during The Daily Show podcast, explaining just how different the societal & media landscapes are now compared to when he was last hosting.

Jen Flanz is the Showrunner, Writer & Executive Producer of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Ramin Hedayati, Justin Melkmann, and Zhubin Parang serve as Co-Executive Producers. Ian Berger, Max Browning, Pam DePace, David Kibuuka, David Paul Meyer, and Elise Terrell are Supervising Producers; Jocelyn Conn, Jeff Gussow, Brittany Radocha, Shawna Shepherd, and Beth Shorr are Producers. Dan Amira is Head Writer and Producer, with Lauren Sarver Means and Daniel Radosh as Senior Writers. The series is directed by David Paul Meyer. Sushil Dayal is the Executive in Charge of Production for The Daily Show, and Ari Pearce and Matthew Parillo serve as Executives in Charge of Production for Comedy Central. The show has an audience of over 47 million across its social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat &  @DailyShowDogs.

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