Jon Stewart has announced his departure from The Daily Show and plans to step down later this year. The US satirist, who has been host of the show for nearly two decades, has been praised as the host who transformed Comedy Central’s satirical news programme.
While some are pondering where next for late night laughs, others are praising Stewart’s ability to engage a liberal, young audience to the programme. So how does the show, which Stewart has hosted for so many years, compare to other US news and politics shows?
In 2012, the Pew Research Centre published the results of a survey that showed The Colbert Report and The Daily Show had the youngest audience of the 24 news sources it tested. It found that 43% of The Colbert Report’s regular audience was under 30-years old, while 39% of The Daily Show’s regular viewers are in the same age bracket.
The same report by the Pew Research Centre shows that around 43% of The Daily Show viewers are liberals, compared with 40% of The Colbert Report. The Rachel Maddow show reported the highest percentage of liberals in its regular news audience.
Thanks to Pew Research (again) we also know that The Daily Show’s viewers rate as pretty knowledgable when it comes to current events. Almost a third of regular Daily Show viewers were able to answer the four questions Pew asked correctly.
If you’re interested, these were on the following: which party controls the House of Representatives, the current unemployment rate, the nation that Angela Merkel leads and which presidential candidate favours taxing higher-income Americans.
So what about the man himself? How does he fare? According to, now quite dated, 2004 research by Pew, Stewart was found to be popular mainly with young people. While 6% of those under 30 said that Stewart was their favourite journalist, only 1% of those over 30-years old agreed that he was their favourite. Along with his long time antagonist Bill O’ Reilly, Stewart was then the top pick among those under 30.
