The announcement that Jon Stewart would be joining HBO might seem a little shocking at first. After all, the subscription service already has its own version of Stewart: former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. It also has Bill Maher doing his weekly comedic take on politics and they just spent millions hiring Bill Simmons to do his own talk show after ESPN failed to renew his contract and eventually shut down Grantland.
But if you look at the trends of the television industry, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, especially when you look at the details of the deal as HBO reported it. Stewart isn’t going to have his own talk show to compete against all of these other extremely competent (straight, white) men. Instead he’s going to be making short, topical works for HBO Go and HBO Now, the channel’s streaming services (the latter available without even needing a cable subscription). The content won’t appear on the linear service at all. The competition for A-list stars to make the leap away from television as they know it is getting quite fierce.
This is similar to the move that Chelsea Handler made after leaving E!, joining up with Netflix for a talk show format to be named later (and still not really named). Jerry Seinfeld, who still makes loads of money just off Seinfeld reruns, took his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee to startup streaming service Crackle. And why wouldn’t he? Seinfeld doesn’t need the cash, he just wants someone to let him do whatever he wants.
That also seems to be the appeal for both Stewart and Handler, departing cable to do things in that murky space between the internet and television (Telenet? Intervision?). They both grew tired of doing a very demanding and heavily formatted show four days a week, so why wouldn’t they want to escape those confines to an environment that is much more open to experimentation and trying something that will benefit the talent? It also doesn’t hurt that HBO is much more diverse programming-wise than Comedy Central, giving Stewart the chance to create and produce another series or direct a drama like he did with his cinematic directorial debut Rosewater.
Neither Netflix nor HBO relies on advertising revenue to stay afloat, and that is the key to these types of deals. It just needs subscribers to think that paying money every month for access to their content is completely necessary. Then it can just create any sort of content it wants as long as people keep paying the monthly fee. Signing big names like Stewart (or Handler or Simmons) keeps that prestigious halo around the brand. Also, Stewart’s devoted following will happily shell out the cash to watch his take on current events, especially with a presidential election on the horizon.
Signing huge names like Stewart is going to become more important now that there are so many streaming services vying for supremacy. This deal announcement comes the day after CBS All Access, the eye network’s subscription service that had heretofore only streamed current and past CBS shows, announced that it is creating a new, original Star Trek series that will be available exclusively through streaming. Netflix, of course, has their rapidly expanding roster of original programming, Hulu is doing the same, and Amazon Prime is pulling up the rear, happy to win Emmys and offer people free delivery on their diaper shipments.
HBO’s Stewart acquisition is as much about gaining something for its brand as it is keeping him away from everyone else. The streaming wars are coming, people, and there are only a finite number of A-list names and top-shelf shows to go around. Just look at the Netflix deal for Friends reruns, which Hulu answered by paying even more money for the rights to old Seinfeld episodes. But, hey, if the fight for eyeballs means that we get to watch more great shows whenever we want and have Jon Stewart making fun of Donald Trump again, this is a war where the viewer is obviously winning.
