Jon Stewart Will Return to Host ‘The Daily Show’ on Mondays
Jon Stewart will return to host “The Daily Show” on Monday nights during the 2024 election campaign, the network announced on Wednesday, bringing the comedian back to the television program that he turned into appointment viewing.
“The Daily Show” has been without a permanent host since Trevor Noah stepped down in 2022. The first episode with Stewart, who left the show in 2015 after serving as host since 1999, will air on Comedy Central on Feb. 12 and on Paramount+ the following day.
Stewart will also executive produce all episodes of “The Daily Show.” The episodes from Tuesday to Thursday will be hosted by a rotating lineup of the show’s news team.
Chris McCarthy, the chief executive of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios, said in a statement that Stewart was the voice of a generation.
“We are honored to have him return to Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’ to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country,” McCarthy said. He added, “In our age of staggering hypocrisy and performative politics, Jon is the perfect person to puncture the empty rhetoric and provide much-needed clarity with his brilliant wit.”
Stewart parted ways with his Apple show, “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” last year after 20 episodes. He appeared to acknowledge his return to “The Daily Show” in a social media post shortly after the news was announced. “Excited for the future!” he said while making a joke about college football.
Since Noah’s last show, Comedy Central has used guest hosts to fill the void. Stewart, who helped shepherd Noah’s rise and bolster the career of several other late-night stars, is expected to help shape the show’s next chapter.
After “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” won an Emmy this month for best variety talk series, the former correspondent Roy Wood mouthed “Please hire a host” from the stage.
Stewart will return to Comedy Central in a starkly different landscape than the one he left, with a growing number of Americans losing trust in the news media. By putting him at the desk on Mondays, the most-watched episodes, studio executives hope to catch viewers up on everything that happened over the weekend.
