3 Takeaways From The Year-Long Search For "The Daily Show" Host

Trevor Noah relinquished his hosting duties on “The Daily Show” in late 2022, and after a lengthy list of guest hosts, an unconventional replacement plan is finally in place. Noah’s predecessor Jon Stewart is returning to host, but just on Mondays. “The Daily Show” correspondents Ronny Chieng, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta, Desi Lydic and Dulcé Sloan will take turns hosting the other nights of the week.

Jon Stewart will also executive produce “The Daily Show.” And while the Trevor Noah succession plan is far from conventional, it seems like a good idea. Here’s why.

1. Building Audience
Sometimes executives feel the need to quickly find a replacement immediately when there’s an on-air opening, but what’s the rush? By having an on-going Talent search, execs get to evaluate, and in some cases reevaluate a wide pool of personalities. As the Talent rotated in “The Daily Show” host’s chair, the program was exposed to a variety of social media followers. In addition to promoting their opportunity to host “The Daily Show,” guests hosts would post clips of the show. So while some followers tuned in to see a particular celebrity, “The Daily Show” had an opportunity to retain new viewers.

2. Promoting Talent From Within
“The Daily Show” frequently utilized its correspondents as guest hosts. And because of the search for a permanent host took so long, it seems as though the powers that be realized that sometimes in-house Talent is just as good as those with bigger names in the entertainment industry. Because the process to pick a new host took so long, former correspondent and writer Roy Wood Jr. moved on his career. But even though losing him was a big loss, the remaining correspondents are all exceptional. Another benefit of giving lesser know in-house Talent the opportunity to host: they’re not as expensive as a “big name” Talent would be., and they already understand the show and have relationships with the people who work on it.

3. The Power Of Familiarity
Comedy Central seems to have taken a page out of MSNBC’s playbook by having Jon Stewart on-air just one day a week. When popular anchor Rachel Maddow was starting to get burned out from the grind of working on “The Rachel Maddow Show” five nights a week, MSNBC allowed her to go to a one-night a week schedule. Now that the year of a presidential election has begun, having Jon on a part-time basis is probably better than having anyone else full-time. As the person credited with making “The Daily Show” great, hopefully Jon Stewart will be able to bring the show to new heights.

Jon Stewart will return to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” on February 12th.