Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Jon Stewart to Leave The Daily Show?

It's not exactly a big secret by now, unless you've been living under a rock with no Internet connection (How are you reading this, if that was the case?), that Jon Stewart has let it slip that he will be leaving his post at The Daily Show. All the big news outlets are making a big fuss over this.

I got to thinking a bit. How is this any different than the change of hosts for The Tonight Show over the years? I'm not all that old, but I can remember the switch from Johnny Carson to Jay Leno. Then in 2010 was the big farce when it was passed on to Conan O'Brien, but Leno whined and cried about losing his cash cow and favorable time slot, among other things, thus Leno resumed as host until 2014, when the reigns was passed on to Jimmy Fallon, who is currently hitting it out of the park.

To be honest, I am not shocked one bit that Stewart is planning to move on. He made his huge splash in political news by adding comedy to it. He has taken on the crazies like Bill O'Reilly, Anderson Cooper and even played a little Hardball both in staged debates and to bring down the curtains on their own shows. A simple YouTube search will net you some great clips.

Since a successor has not been announced as of yet, I think it would be great to move John Oliver into that spot. He has already worked on The Daily Show before as a news correspondent and as a guest host while Stewart was off filming his movie for a few months.

I believe that if John Oliver were to get the position, a lot more younger people would be interested in current events happening in the world. Since The Daily Show is mostly a comedy news show based around real events, it can be thought of as a more serious version of The Onion. I personally would watch more.

What do you think? I would be very interested in knowing who you think would fit as the replacement for Jon Stewart when he leaves The Daily Show. Let's talk about it in the comments.