Jon Stewart Corrects ‘Daily Show’ Viewer Who Claims ‘TV Is Dying’ and People Use Social Media to Watch Entertainment: ‘Is That True?’

Zack Sharf
·2 min read
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Is television dying? It’s a claim Jon Stewart pushed back on during his return to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Taking pre-show questions from the audience, Stewart was confronted with one viewer who asked about TV in the age of social media.

“What do you think about young people getting all of their information and entertainment from social media?” the audience member asked before outright claiming: “TV is dying!”

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“Is that true?” Stewart answered back. “You still watch TV but you just watch it on your computer [or phone]. You understand that’s still TV? You’re just watching it on a different delivery service.”

“It’s like, heroin is heroin whether you snort it or shoot it,” Stewart continued. “It’s still an opiate for the masses as is television, you’re just getting it in smaller bites. But it’s still TV. We make it.”

Stewart hosted “The Daily Show” from 1999 to 2015 and recently returned to the flagship series as the host of Monday night episodes through the 2024 election cycle. His return has been a ratings blockbuster for Comedy Central. As Variety reported, the Stewart-hosted Feb. 19 episode of “The Daily Show” earned the highest viewership the show has seen on its home network since Stewart’s final episode in 2015.

Coming back to “The Daily Show” was also made possible for Stewart after he ended his run over at Apple, where he tried and failed to launch a new talk show series titled “The Problem With Jon Stewart.” The first season of the show aired episodes every two weeks, while the second season switched to a weekly format. “The Problem” had Stewart exploring a single topic with each episode, but it ended after Season 2.

“I wanted a place to unload thoughts as we get into this election season,” Stewart told CBS Mornings about going back to Comedy Central. “I thought I was going to do it over at — they call it Apple TV+. It’s a television enclave, very small. It’s like living in Malibu. But they decided … they felt that they didn’t want me to say things that might get me in trouble.”

While an individual with knowledge of the situation said at the time that Stewart and Apple’s split was an amicable one, The New York Times reported that the duo had disagreements over topics that were to be covered in the third season, including A.I. and China.

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