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The Daily Show

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Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart on the set of The Daily Show
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart on the set of The Daily Show

The Daily Show (currently The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, also known as TDS to fans and staffers) is a half-hour satirical "fake news" program produced by and run on the Comedy Central cable television network in the United States.

Providing comedy/news in the tradition of Michael Moore's TV Nation and Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment, Comedy Central's Daily Show reports on the foibles of the real world with a satirical edge. The show has also developed a reputation as one of the sharpest political commentary shows on TV. In addition to news stories, the Daily Show also has celebrities (and semi-celebrities) on for interviews. It also interviews notable figures in politics, especially U.S. politics, who would not be considered celebrities in the traditional sense of the word, such as Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie or pollster John Zogby.

Contents
1 Awards
2 Episodes and timing
3 Format
4 Production
5 The Daily Show as a "news source"
6 Notable stories and events
7 Interviews

7.1 Notable guests

8 Other information
9 Correspondents

9.1 Former correspondents

10 See also
11 External links
12 References

Awards

The staff of The Daily Show won a Peabody Award for their "Indecision 2000" coverage of the 2000 Presidential Election. In 2003 and 2004, the staff won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series, and for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program.

Episodes and timing

The show has four new episodes a week, Monday through Thursday, although the program will occasionally go on hiatus for one or two weeks at a time. It is shown at 11E/10C, a time when local television stations show their real news reports, and about half an hour before most other late-night comedy programs begin to go on the air.

An edited version of the show, called The Daily Show - Global Edition, is run outside of the U.S. on CNN International once a week. Australian network SBS also ran the edited version once a week.

The weekly four-episode run is broadcast in Canada on The Comedy Network each night at 11 pm (eastern) and the CTV network each night at midnight.

The Daily Show tapes every Monday through Thursday at the Daily Show studios, located at 513 West 54th Street, New York City. Doors open at 5:45 PM. Audience members must be 18 or over to attend (tickets are required for attendance).

Format

The Daily Show was originally hosted by Craig Kilborn when it premiered in 1996, but he left to take over The Late Late Show on CBS in 1999. Jon Stewart is the current host. The show's format generally consists of "Headlines," "Other News," correspondent pieces, and interviews.

The "Headlines" and "Other News" segments are similar to monologues on other late-night television programs, poking fun at the day's news. Sometimes, the show puts correspondents "on location" for remotes, but the correspondents are usually just standing in the studio with a bluescreened backdrop. While generally no note is made of this fact, it is occasionally the subject of jokes, such as a correspondent supposedly being in a press base on Mars.

Correspondent pieces involve the correspondents actually traveling to a remote location to make a report or interview people important to the story. Some segments occur periodically, such as "Mark Your Calendar," "Ed Helms's Digital Watch," "Back in Black" with Lewis Black, and "This Week in God." Since the early days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a common part of the show has been "Mess O'Potamia," focusing on the troubles in that region.

Each show ends with a "Moment of Zen" (the version on CNN International ends with the "International Moment of Zen"), which is a short, usually humorous video clip. Most of the time, it is an extended clip from one of the stories aired during the show, but sometimes it is just a strange video pulled down from the newswires.

Production

According to an October 7, 2003, USA Today article, the show is pulled together in this way: a researcher scans major newspapers, the Associated Press, and cable news channels, then gives possible topics to the ten writers. These meet to discuss headline material for the lead news segment. By 11:15 a.m. they meet with Jon Stewart, and by 12:30 they have come up with jokes for the day's show. The cast hold a rehearsal, then the show is taped at 6:30 in front of an audience.

The Daily Show as a "news source"

Television ratings show that the program generally has about one million viewers nightly, fairly good for cable television. In demographic terms, the viewership is skewed to a relatively young audience compared to other news shows. A 2004 Nielsen Media Research study commissioned by Comedy Central put the median age at 35, while, for instance, the audience of The O'Reilly Factor has a median age of 63. There is anecdotal evidence that a large chunk of TDS viewers are university students.

However, the show's writers often repeat the fact that The Daily Show is a comedy program and not a reliable news source by itself. The show does not follow the normal rules of journalistic integrity, but much of the schtick of the program involves questioning whether or not establishment television news sources in the United States, notably the cable news channels CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel, are holding themselves to high journalistic standards. Also, even if one were to rely on The Daily Show for regular information, they'd be slightly out of date as the show usually covers news from the day before (due in part to the taping schedule).

The Washington Post ran an article on August 24, 2004 in which it quoted a "whining" Nightline anchor Ted Koppel, who said to his viewers in a telecast from the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston: "A lot of television viewers—more, quite frankly, than I'm comfortable with—get their news from the Comedy Channel on a program called The Daily Show."

Stewart took issue with Koppel's comment, saying Daily Show fans watch "for comedic interpretation" of the news. "To be informed," Koppel replied, refusing to budge from his position. "They actually think they're coming closer to the truth with your show." Stewart shot back: "Now that's a different thing, that's credibility, that's a different animal." Appearing on each other's shows a few weeks later, Koppel and Stewart downplayed the idea that the two had any animosity toward each other.

Interestingly, the National Annenberg Election Survey at the University of Pennsylvania ran a study of American television viewers around the same time and found that fans of The Daily Show had a more accurate idea of the facts behind the 2004 presidential election than most others. The study primarily focused on comparing the audiences of TDS with that of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman, but Daily Show viewers also beat out people who primarily got their news through the national evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC and those who mostly read newspapers, while roughly matching the knowledge level of viewers who watched a considerable amount of cable TV news. The study attempted to compensate for the fact that many viewers of TDS get information from many sources including the Internet, though most analysts and show staffers prefer to think that Daily Show viewers use the show as part of their news filtering process rather than a source in itself.

Notable stories and events

There have been many memorable times on the show, though a few stand out. One of the most requested clips among Daily Show fans is the opening monologue that Stewart spoke on the first new episode after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In it, he conveyed his best wishes to viewers and quickly lampooned the fact that he was one of the last TV personalities to make such a speech, saying:

I'm sorry to do this to you. It's another entertainment show beginning with an overwrought speech of a shaken host. TV is nothing, if not redundant. … I'm sure we're getting in right under the wire before the cast of Survivor offers their insight into what to do in these situations.

Stewart reminded his audience that the United States had gone through troublesome times before, and he related a story from his youth. He said that when riots broke out after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the administrators of his elementary school "shut the lights off and we got to sit under our desks and we thought that was really cool and they gave us cottage cheese." He also pulled other light moments out of that dark period by saying the view had changed at his apartment:

The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center and now it's gone. They attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. … You can't beat that.

Of course, most memorable times from the show are less poignant and more absurdist or simply funny. An image that commonly appears when magazines review the show comes from a 2003 report by Stephen Colbert about a purported sexual scandal involving Prince Charles. The Daily Show was lampooning the fact that British news outlets had to resort to using innuendo to be able to report on the situation at all due to the strict libel laws in the United Kingdom. Colbert reported, with emphasis:

This is a story I could really wrap my hands around. I mean, I'd love to grab this story by the hilt and work this story long and hard, maybe teasing you with a few details. Make you beg for the story until it builds into a huge climax and explodes all over the front pages.

A moment later, he proceeded to wolf down most of a banana and tried to continue reporting, but soon totally lost his composure and could hardly stop laughing—a rare occurrence on the program. However, he succeeded in wrapping up the piece with his trademark stone-faced signoff (which is simply, "Jon").

In 2004, the Writ of Douchebaggery was a fictitious writ coined by Jon Stewart. It allows the invoker to refuse to produce testimony on ground that they are a douchebag.

While testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to turn over an important memo to the members of the committee, though he did not invoke executive privilege or anything else.

Shortly after this incident, Jon Stewart remarked: "Dude, I'm no lawyer, but you gotta invoke something: the Fifth Amendment, executive privilege, writ of douchebaggery–something..."

Stewart has also referred to the "Congressional Medal of Douchebaggery" and labeled pundit Robert Novak a "Douchebag of Liberty".

Interviews

Interviews usually take place toward the end of the show, and are most frequently of actors, musicians, and authors, although people important in political circles have often been guests as well. Politically-oriented interviews have begun to attract a considerable amount of attention. Stewart has been known to ask some questions more directly than other interviewers on American television, even though they may be sheathed in a somewhat satirical cloak. He has also been known to stop his guests when they start using talking points or other canned responses, and often disputes the facts behind their claims. However, Stewart has been accused of going easy on some of his more liberal ones, while aggressively challenging more conservative figures.

However, things don't always work out as anticipated. A much-publicized interview with U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry fell short of the expectations of many viewers. The show has also asked President George W. Bush to attend, even placing a newspaper ad with an invitation during the 2004 Republican National Convention. It was requested that he mark one of three checkboxes to RSVP: "I will attend alone," "I will attend with my Vice President," or "I am unaware of your existence."

Notable guests

U.S. Sen. John Edwards first announced his candidacy for the 2004 Presidential Election on The Daily Show.

Other information

The show's theme music is "Dog on Fire" by Bob Mould, performed by They Might Be Giants.

A book by Jon Stewart entitled The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (ISBN 0446532681) was released on September 20, 2004.

Correspondents

Former correspondents

  • Mary Birdsong (2002)
  • A. Whitney Brown (1996-1998)
  • Steve Carell (1997-2004)
  • Vance DeGeneres (1999-2002)
  • Eric Drysdale (2001)
  • Adrianne Frost (2002)
  • Jon Glaser (2004)
  • Rachael Harris (2002-2003)
  • Laura Kightlinger (1998)
  • Beth Littleford (1996-2000)
  • Jerry Minor (2000)
  • David Pompeii (2001)
  • Mo Rocca (1998-2003)
  • Michael Showalter (1996)
  • Denny Siegel (1999)
  • Miriam Tolan (2000-2001)
  • Brian Unger (1996-1998)
  • David Wain (1996)
  • Nancy Walls (1999-2002)
  • Matt Walsh (2001-2002)
  • Lauren Weedman (2001-2002)
  • Lizz Winstead (1996-1997)
  • Stacey Grenrock-Woods (1999-2003)

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about The Daily Show.

External links

References


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