Jon Stewart Returns to Host ‘The Daily Show’

Jon Stewart is returning to “The Daily Show.” The late-night host will return to the Comedy Central original every Monday throughout the 2024 election cycle starting Feb. 12, the day after the Super Bowl airs on CBS.

While Stewart hosts on Mondays, historically the most-watched day of the series, a rotating lineup of “Daily Show” news team members will host Tuesdays through Thursdays. Additionally, Stewart will executive produce the series that made him a household name alongside his longtime manager, James “Baby Doll” Dixon. He will also be reunited with showrunner and executive producer Jen Flanz.

Stewart will also executive produce all “Daily Show” episodes in 2025 and is expected to EP beyond that, an insider familiar with the matter told TheWrap.

“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,” Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios, said in a press release. “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.”

New episodes of “The Daily Show” will premiere weeknights starting on Feb. 12 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central. They will then be available the next day on Paramount+.

During his 16 years as host of “The Daily Show,” Stewart turned the Comedy Central late night show into a must-watch event. He became famous for his takedowns of Fox News, but Stewart’s take-no-prisoners approach to all news coverage changed the format of late night comedy. Over his career, Stewart helped launch some of the biggest names in late night including Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Michael Che and Samantha Bee.

Most recently, Stewart was the host of Apple TV+’s “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” The series aired for two seasons before it was canceled in October of 2023. The New York Times reported that the cancellation came down to creative differences for Season 3 after Apple executives allegedly told staff that certain topics, such as China and artificial intelligence, were off the table. These claims led to an investigation from the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

This major news temporarily answers the question that’s plagued “The Daily Show” for the past year: Who will permanently host? In September of 2022 host Trevor Noah announced that he was stepping down from the program to the shock of audiences, cast and crew members alike. Noah’s last day as host was Dec. 8 of that year.

Even though he was unassociated with the program for a full year, “The Daily Show” won the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series for Noah’s final season with the program. Due to delays caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the 2023 Emmys took place in January of 2024.

After he stepped down, “The Daily Show” employed a series of guest hosts throughout 2023. Three of those celebrity hosts — Leslie Jones, Sarah Silverman and Kal Penn — manned the desk over the course of two different weeks. Other guest hosts included Wanda Sykes, Chelsea Handler, D. L. Hughley, Al Franken, John Leguizamo, Marlon Wayans, Hasan Minhaj, Desus Nice, Michelle Wolf and Charlamagne tha God.

The post Jon Stewart Returns to Host ‘The Daily Show’ appeared first on TheWrap.