Jon Stewart to Return as ‘Daily Show’ Host

The Daily Show has been looking for a permanent host for over a year now, ever since Trevor Noah announced he was leaving the series way back in September of 2022. Since then, the show has continued on with a series of rotating celebrity guest hosts, a choice that’s proven to be surprisingly successful in the ratings — so much so, in fact, that there were recent reports that Comedy Central was considering simply not hiring a new host. Instead, the plan would be to let the show’s various correspondents take turns anchoring the series.

That’s sort of what will happen moving forward, with one major twist: The series’ long-serving former host Jon Stewart will be returning to host The Daily Show again, but only on Monday nights. Every Monday, Stewart will appear; the other nights of the week will be headlined by the correspondents.

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Here was Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios’ Chris McCarthy on the very surprising announcement:

Jon Stewart is the voice of our generation, and 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 as we enter the election season. 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 originally joined The Daily Show in 1999, replacing the series’ original host, Craig Kilborn. Under Stewart’s leadership, TDS became one of the most popular and influential series in late night TV. (That’s also when it adopted its now trademark bent as a show satirizing politics and political news.)

Stewart left the show in 2015 to pursue other projects; he directed a movie and later returned to TV as the host of Apple’s The Problem With Jon Stewart. Last October, The Problem was canceled, reportedly over creative differences between the company and Stewart about the topics that the show should cover.

While having Stewart back will be a big deal for long-time Daily Show fans, just how much of a difference he can make ratings-wise one day a week is unclear. It will be interesting to compare the viewership on his nights to the rest of the week.

Stewart will return to the show starting the week of Feb. 12.