That is a good query, provided that the TV panorama has modified dramatically since he left in 2015.
Cable TV audiences and TV audiences typically have been melting away. And late-night reveals like “The Each day Present” — the perch Stewart is returning to subsequent month — have had actual bother preserving eyeballs, giving the competing lure of TikTok or YouTube or no matter.
When Stewart left “The Each day Present” in 2015, he was bringing in a median of two.2 million viewers an evening, in line with Nielsen. By the point his substitute Trevor Noah signed off on the finish of 2022, that quantity had shrunk to 600,000. And through 2023, when Comedy Central used a battery of visitor hosts to maintain the present going, that viewers had shrunk to 570,000.
Advertisers are very conscious of the decay: Between 2018 and 2022, late-night advert {dollars} dropped by 40%, Selection reported.
However, perhaps questioning about Stewart’s TV viewers is not the best query. After Stewart’s information broke, I made a pair calls to individuals who have a superb bead on late evening and Stewart they usually informed me to view it this fashion: Ignore the TV scores.
As an alternative, think about the best way clips from Stewart’s weekly present carry out on social — on the likes of TikTok or YouTube or no matter.
That is sort of apparent recommendation in 2024, when late-night comedy is routinely minimize up and distributed on the web. But in addition not fully apparent. If TV scores aren’t vital, then why would Stewart come again to a TV community — and why would a TV community care about touchdown Stewart?
For Stewart, who spent the previous few years toiling in close to obscurity on an Apple TV present (if you have not seen it, you are not alone), it may be so simple as getting again within the public eye. Doing a factor he is good at on Comedy Central — the factor he was good at doing on Comedy Central a decade in the past — might be an actual enhance.
“That is about getting a platform that may then get social foreign money,” a TV insider tells me. “He wants a house to do it.”
Sure, Stewart does not want Comedy Central to host and produce a TV present, then get clips from these reveals minimize up and distributed to numerous platforms.
He may finance all of that himself, or discover individuals who wished to place up the cash. My TikTok is filled with individuals self-producing “Each day Present”-style comedy and interviews (with very diverse outcomes).
However: Coming again to Comedy Central means he’ll have a turnkey operation that is aware of methods to make TV and has spent plenty of money and time determining methods to make bits of TV journey on the web.
And for a sure type of performer, and a sure type of TV watcher — that’s, previous individuals like me — a model like “The Each day Present” nonetheless has which means and resonance, even when it will get minimize up and clipped on Instagram or no matter. It’ll garner consideration in a means that Jon Stewart Talks On YouTube would battle to do.
And make no mistake: “The Each day Present” viewers was previous when Stewart was on TV — the median age of his viewers was 48 when he left the present — and it has gotten a lot, a lot older: Nielsen says the present’s median viewer age was 60 throughout Noah’s final yr, and greater than 63 in the course of the 2023 visitor host season.
What about from Comedy Central’s perspective? They’re, in any case, a cable TV community owned by a TV firm that primarily will get paid when individuals subscribe to their networks or watch their reveals on TV. It isn’t simple to make actual cash from YouTube clips, and subsequent to not possible (proper now) from TikTok or Instagram.
One idea is that Stewart’s previous viewers, who’re … previous, will certainly come again to look at him. That viewers remains to be buoying Stewart protege Stephen Colbert at CBS, the place “The Late Present” averages a bit beneath 2 million viewers an evening.
However even when they do not, the TV individuals I talked to argue that it will not matter that a lot to Comedy Central. If Stewart does translate properly to TikTok — and with the best modifying and manufacturing, it ought to — that is nonetheless a win for proprietor Paramount, which is very a lot up on the market.
For the time being, Paramount’s massive property are a really costly NFL deal, a really costly cope with “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan, and Tom Cruise, who makes “Mission Unattainable” motion pictures for the corporate however can be going to begin making motion pictures for rival Warner Bros. It is easy to think about Paramount considering that the halo of Stewart — even when it is “the children love these items on social” halo as an alternative of a scores halo — might be significant to a possible purchaser.
