We've known this moment has been coming for months, but the night Jon Stewart breaks our (supposedly bleeding liberal) hearts, disobeys an "executive order" from Barack Obama, and pulls himself off The Daily Show is finally starting to feel real. Today the long-running host announced his guests for Aug. 6 finale. Superstar comedians Louis C.K., Amy Schumer, and Dennis Leary will see off Stewart as he rides into off into the sunset to run an animal farm.
Just this week Stewart called C.K. and Leary his favorite guests because they're his IRL friends and "I get to not work [and] fuck around with them for five minutes."
Before we even have to begin coping with the loss of Stewart we already have an idea of what to expect from Trevor Noah's takeover. Yesterday at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour the South African comedian outlined some of his planned changes. Noah said Fox News, longtime provider of Daily Show fodder, will receive less coverage as he shifts his eyes to digital media.
FromEW:
"The Daily Show was based on an emerging 24 hour news cycle, that’s everything it was. That’s what inspired The Daily Show. Now you look at news and it’s changed. It’s no longer predicated around 24 hour news. There are so many different choices. Half of it is online now. Now you’ve got the Gawkers, the BuzzFeeds. The way people are drawing their news is soundbites and headlines and click-bait links has changed everything. The biggest challenge is going to be an exciting one I’m sure is how are we going to bring all of that together looking at it from a bigger lens as opposed to just going after one source—which was historically Fox News.”
Perhaps change isn't so scary after all. If executed well this could be a welcomed change for The Daily Show in the year two thousand and fifteen. While Stewart is out working one of the world's oldest professions, his successor will take the reigns further into the Internet.
