Jon Stewart leaving Daily Show

As much as Colbert's departure hit hard, he'd be nowhere without Jon Stewart. This will be a tough blow for Comedy Central, and for all of those (including me) that are big fans of his work over the years.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Thank you Jon. <a href="Comedy Central on Twitter: "Thank you Jon. http://t.co/yPdxjnkuLw"">pic.twitter.com/yPdxjnkuLw</a></p>&mdash; Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) <a href="">February 10, 2015</a></blockquote>
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This is huge news, and very tough for Comedy Central (I think it'd be great if they made Samantha Bee the host, but given the guy mentality of comedy, I'm not hopeful). I wonder what Stewart will do next? How old is Lorne Michaels, anyway? Could he be the replacement produced for SNL?

 

I imagine he will make movies full-time.

And it's not just Colbert, but Steve Carell, Ed Helms, John Oliver, Rob Riggle, Larry Wilmore and Demetri Martin, among others, all got their big breaks as Daily Show writers/correspondents.

 

Some poster on boston.com just noted this gives NBC the chance to hire the most trusted news anchor in the business.

 

There's going to be a whole swath of Millennials who won't know where to get their news from now.
This is going to be hard because Stewart is such an icon. He did just a good job at social commentary, there is going to be a void.

 

Ya'll will think I'm nuts.
But ya know who may be a good replacement?
Russell Brand.

 

You ARE nuts. I mean, he had a talk show. It was on FX or FXX, but it was kind of blah to me.

I've seen multiple people mention Kilborn as a joke, but I do think it would be funny if they let him come back for one show, or one segment. (I thought the same thing about The Late Late Show, which is cycling through guest hosts right now and in a very bizarre place until Cordon takes over in March.) In-house, I think a Jason Jones-Samantha Bee show could be really good.

 

Barf. Do people really LIKE Russell Brand? I think he's terrible.

 

Russell's good at holding a decent conversation during an interview. I can't think of one damn comedian right now who could be topical and interview well. Tosh already has a show and is too snarky. Lewis Black will turn off the younger audience. Patton Oswalt would be excellent but I can't see him being interested.

 

Wilmore has had a good TV career on and off camera for decades and was nominated for multiple Emmy's and NAACP Image Awards in the 90s. Carell and Colbert had plenty of solid credits before the Daily Show as well. They were rising stars whatever their next jobs turned out to be, so I wouldn't give Stewart that much credit for their careers, although the Daily Show probably put Colbert and Wilmore on different, interesting paths.

 

John Hodgman and Kristen Schaal have done pretty well for themselves.

 

I think TDS / Stewart does get credit for spotting the talent and doing their best to grow it, though. (Olivia Munn excluded.) Even this past year, they lost Wilmore and Oliver, and just kept plugging along with Jordan Klepper and Jessica Williams. I'm not sure if it's because Stewart is there to keep things running smoothly, or because their writing staff is excellent, or because they know just who to hire, or some combination of that. But the bumpy years of SNL and MadTV show how hard that can be.

Speaking of... Wilmore's show did not impress me in my two weeks of giving it a go. Maybe I'll try it again another time, but right now, it's like a poor man's Politically Incorrect. The panel parts were horrible to me, and Wilmore was much better in his solo segments, which I hope they focus more on going forward.