Happy 30th anniversary The Daily Show. Ish.
ABW is produced out of Australia where our access to The Daily Show through legitimate means has been difficult at the best of times. It’s a show that for the longest time was only available in a weekly international compilation that was available here on CNN International. Then anytime a local network picked it up, episodes were often delayed by several days.
Even when Comedy Central launched a channel locally, The Daily Show was still rarely ever broadcast with the sort of regularity that made it watchable.
The way Australians have watched it properly was initially through BitTorrent and then, in more recent years, by way of YouTube.
All of this is to say that our only familiarity with the earliest incarnation of The Daily Show as hosted by Craig Kilborn, was through occasional clips on Talk Soup.
Today-ish (I write from the future) marks 30 years of the debut of the show (July 22, 1996), with a pretty big asterisk. While a lot of the format was in place during this early incarnation, it was only when Jon Stewart took over hosting the show in 1999 that the show became what we know it as today. So, yeah, this week marks 30 years of the show… but… not really…
My own relationship started with the show just a couple of months after Jon Stewart took over and I was watching the show with regularity right through to just after September 11, 2001 where the show shifted tone for understandable reasons. Within a few years though, I was back watching it daily and had The Colbert Report thrown into my daily viewing mix as well. This is a show that, under the reign of Stewart, I have adored.
Worth a read this week are some pieces at Late Nighter looking back at the earliest incarnation of the show (ahead of its real 2029 anniversary).
Bill Carter writes:
Doug Herzog, newly installed as president of Comedy Central, walked in the door looking for what he called “a home-base, flagship” program for the channel, which was, at that point, “a ragtag collection of Gallagher specials, Cheech and Chong movies, and Benny Hill.”
None of that was drawing any ratings; worse, none of it was “giving viewers our comedic take on the world.” Herzog knew where he wanted CC to make its mark. “I was obsessed with late night, Carson first, then Letterman.” Finding a multi-night-a-week late-night show was, for him, a white whale.
Comedy Central did have a late-night franchise in Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, but Herzog didn’t see political comedy as the channel’s identity. He saw a “guidepost” in ESPN’s SportsCenter, then the hottest show on cable, with a nightly take on the world from a lighter, more fun-and-games, pop-culture perspective.
Besides, two weeks into the job, Herzog learned Maher had signed, without notifying his current employers, to move his show to ABC. Done deal. “I was like, f*ck that,” Herzog said
The fate of The Daily Show was altered when Kilborn jumped ship in 1998. Like so many stories about late night TV chat shows in the US, its fate was linked with David Letterman. For years Jon Stewart was considered the heir apparent to Letterman, with many expecting Letterman to give Stewart, signed to a holding deal at Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company, the hosting role at The Late Late Show.
Despite many seeing Stewart as his heir, or possibly because of it, Letterman signed Kilborn. That opened up the hosting role at The Daily Show and the rest, as they say… yadda yadda…
At Late Nighter Bill Carter writes:
Jon Stewart made clear from the start that he would be the one deciding everything the show would be saying.
“It took him only a minute,” Herzog said. “First meeting: ‘We’re not doing that MTV shit in here.’”
Politics did not drive the show pre-Stewart. Herzog had wanted the show to do politics sparingly and concentrate on pop-culture stories. That was about to change.
“In comes Jon Stewart,” Smithberg said, “who suddenly has opinions and a point of view, and we’re like, ‘What’s this noise?’ He’s like, ‘You don’t understand. I’m your boss now, and we are going to change.’”
Late-night television was changing with it. Stewart unflinchingly embraced what had long been the third rail of the genre: the open expression of a point of view.
“What we had previously was like a salad bar of points of view,” Smithberg said. “And now we had a chef.”
The chef had strong feelings about the menu and how it was going to be put together. He pounded the point that The Daily Show would change its process. No longer would the host sit in a room with the writers and kick around ideas. They would come into his office and pitch jokes and stories in teams of two.
“He kind of took the show apart and put it back together,” Smithberg said. “He really became the editor-in-chief—and the show got better for it.”
You might also be interested to hear about the show from Craig Kilborn’s perspective. This from an interview this week at Gold Derby:
I always knew The Daily Show was put together the wrong way, and produced the wrong way. When I was there, they didn’t want a host-driven show, which, in my humble opinion, is unrealistic and unsustainable. It simply defies the basics of late night. But I never said anything for a number of reasons. I’m a nice guy — I’m not that aggressive. We had a show to launch, and there was no time for a restructure.
Also, why create waves when I wanted to leave anyway? I wanted to do a traditional network late-night show. So I ignored the silliness and the dysfunction and had a blast hosting The Daily Show. And I really enjoyed the end of the week when I would stand up from behind the desk and take my slender frame and… dance, dance, dance.
Speaking of Letterman…
When longtime Johnny Carson EP, then Letterman EP, and eventual Craig Ferguson EP Peter Lassally died earlier this week, I was waiting for the Bill Carter remembrance, which you can read at his Late Nighter site.
Carson told Letterman he himself would walk away from the deal NBC had on the table.
It wasn’t the ending Lassally wanted, because the Letterman job was in New York. He stayed for a year, then returned to his and Alice’s classy Beverly Hills home—and their retreat in Malibu—to oversee the CBS shows that followed Letterman’s, hosted first by Tom Snyder, then Craig Kilborn, and Craig Ferguson.
In later years, Lassally never lost his interest, nor excitement, in the discovery of some new talent. He still whispered to his former hosts. For a time, he listened to the complete monologues that the retired Carson could not help writing and delivering by telephone to an audience of one—his former executive producer.
Lassally encouraged Johnny to send the jokes in to Letterman. When he finally gave in and did, Letterman wound up using some, to Carson’s complete delight. He would call Lassally and say, “Oh my gosh, I got a joke on the air last night. Dave told one of my jokes.”
He even enjoyed receiving the $75 check, the Writers Guild minimum.
David Letterman’s YouTube channel this week also posted this great interview that he did with Lassally during the final weeks of his run hosting The Late Show:
In the true spirit of YouTube knowing exactly what I needed in the world, after watching the interview with Lassally, during which the two men spoke about Johnny Carson with an unsaid, but quite clear reflection on Dave’s own experience as a late night host (with the temperament that came with it), YouTube delivered me this amazing interview with Garry Shandling on the second-last episode of David Letterman hosting Late Night in 1993.
Shandling was already a few seasons into The Larry Sanders Show, but had just turned down the offer to take over as host of Late Night with Dave Letterman departing for CBS. Beyond just being very funny, it’s interesting to watch Dave interview a peer of his and for the two to speak fairly openly about hosting the show.
News Desk
The European Union has granted conditional approval to Paramount Skydance‘s $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, after Paramount agreed to withdraw from United International Pictures, its film-distribution joint venture with Universal. Despite what Paramount’s lawyers might be saying publicly, don’t look at international approval as iNdicative of anything that should be taking place stateside – the WarnerMount business is very different in the US than elsewhere. Read: The Guardian
YouTube ad revenue crossed $11 billion in Q2 2026, up 13% year-on-year. The World Cup drew 1.7 billion unique viewers to World Cup-related videos on the platform. Read: THR
The BBC is considering locking non-payers out of iPlayer. I don’t like this idea for… uh… reasons… Read: Radio Times
The BBC is expected to put Strictly Come Dancing out to competitive tender next year. It’s currently made by BBC Studios. Read: Radio Times
Kenneth Branagh will star in and executive produce Laird, a Paramount+ family drama set in the Scottish Highlands about an estate owner facing off against an American billionaire buying up local land. The Agency creators Jez and John-Henry Butterworth are behind it, with Joe Wright directing the pilot. Read: Dark Horizons
Apple TV has acquired the rights to adapt Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros‘ next novel Peculiar Stars.. Read: THR
Network 10 is axing 10 News+ from weeknights in Australia from 10 August, shifting it to Sundays only and expanding its 5pm local bulletins to 90 minutes. The current affairs show had been drawing around 160,000 viewers a night against rivals topping a million. Read: TV Tonight
Australian preschool series Zip and the Tiny Sprouts — a YouTube hit from Queensland’s Fade In Studio and Tiny Souls Media — has been picked up by ABC Kids locally and PlayKids Learning for a global SVOD rollout. WildBrain distributes the show. Read: IF
The 12-foot The Late Show marquee, auctioned off after Stephen Colbert‘s show was cancelled, has found a second life atop WeHo Bistro on La Cienega in LA. It was bought by owner Jeff Douek for a reported $102,100. Read: THR
Trailer Park
Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall releases direct to digital on August 25. It’s the first of three films.
Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy debuts on Netflix August 5.
In a bold 28-day experiment, comedian Mo Gilligan tours the UK and US on a fried chicken diet to uncover the impact of the craving - and industry behind it.
The Chosen in the Wild With Bear Grylls pits Bear against Jesus. It streams on Prime Video August 9.
Bear Grylls leads The Chosen stars on their wildest adventure yet.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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In the UK, The Daily Show airs at 3:50am on Comedy Central. And again at 4:50 on Comedy Central +1.
Then on Monday mornings, the previous week’s shows are played on Comedy Extra … from 3am.
Thats it! There’s no daytime, let alone primetime airing of TDS here.