Jon Stewart is back on 'The Daily Show' and it's hitting new audience highs

Jon Stewart's return to hosting "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central is proving to be a sensation in terms of audience numbers

Published: Feb 23, 2024 05:06:08 PM IST

Updated: Feb 23, 2024 05:07:40 PM IST

Jon Stewart is back on 'The Daily Show' and it's hitting new audience highs Jon Stewart took the reins of "The Daily Show" in 1999. Jon Stewart took the reins of "The Daily Show" in 1999. Image: The Daily show / Instagram©

Jon Stewart is on a roll. The American host is back at the helm of his cult talk show "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and it's a hit. His second episode attracted a record audience of 1.3 million viewers, the show's best performance since his departure.

Jon Stewart's return to hosting "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central is proving to be a sensation in terms of audience numbers. On Monday, February 19 the show achieved its best score on its original channel since the star host left in 2015, with 1.3 million viewers. Stewart's comeback, which has been hailed by the program's die-hard fans, comes after the torch was passed to Trevor Noah, who hosted the show through to 2022.

It should be noted that this audience record is based solely on viewers who watched the talk show on Comedy Central. While some post-2015 episodes exceeded 1.3 million viewers, they benefited from simulcast on other Paramount Group channels, unlike Monday's episode.

The first show of this new season, which marked Stewart's return on February 12, had attracted 1.9 million total viewers across Comedy Central, CMT, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop and TV Land, but only 930,000 of them were on Comedy Central. Stewart's second episode thus recorded 35% growth. The episode also got a 62% audience boost among young adults 18-34, from 0.13 to 0.22, according to Nielsen's Live+ Same Day data.

It's also important to point out that the 1.3 million viewers don't include streaming figures. And according to Paramount Global's internal data on streams on Paramount+, the first broadcast of Jon Stewart's return to the forefront of "The Daily Show" went from 1.9 million viewers to over 3 million after three days of multiplatform viewing. A good omen for the future, as talk shows are heating up in the run-up to the US presidential election.