The Daily Show

The Daily Show is a half-hour news satire show on Comedy Central, currently hosted by Jon Stewart. The show offers a mix of mock-news commentary and real interviews with celebrities, authors, politicians and other noteworthy guests. With Stuart at the helm of the show, The Daily Show has become a ratings hit and important political news commentary source, being quoted and referenced by mainstream media outlets. A study found that a sizable number of young people received their political news from the show.c

The show won an Emmy Award in 2009 for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series. It repeated the honors the following year, winning for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series at the 2010 Emmy Awards on August 29, 2010.c

In the early 1990s Comedy Central had just been formed out of The Comedy Channel' and the Ha! TV Comedy Network and was looking for new cost effective programming. Traditional comedy shows such as sitcoms were considered too expensive as well as too risky a proposition for such a young network so something was needed that was inexpensive to produce but still entertaining. One of the earliest attempts was when comedians offered commentary during the 1992 State of the Union speech by then President George H. W. Bush. The result was a funny if not outright absurd view of the speech that was quite different from the traditional straight-laced comments offered by main stream news media. This variation was such a success that the network offered coverage of the Democratic and republican conventions with Al Franken which again offered and unconventional view of the events each night. The success of these offerings provided the impetus to try a new type of talk show which featured comedian Bill Maher and combined late night comedy with political talk under the title “Politically Incorrect”.c

The Daily Show was created in 1996 by Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg and was originally hosted by Craig Kilborn. In 1998, Killborn made public statements during an interview that created friction among the staff of the show and resulting in Killborn leaving the show and Jon Stewart taking over as anchor in 1999. Since then the popularity of the show has continued to climb and the show has won several Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and numerous other awards.c

• Lewis Black: 1996 - present
• Samantha Bee: 2003 - present
• Jason Jones: 2005 - present
• Demetri Martin: 2005 - present
• John Hodgman: 2006 - present
• Larry Wilmore: 2006 - present
• John Oliver: 2006 - present
• Aasif Mandvi: 2007 - present
• Wyatt Cenac: 2008 - present
• Rob Riggle: 2006 - 2008
• Rob Corddry: 2002 - 2006
• Ed Helms: 2002 - 2006
• Stephen Colbert: 1997-2005
• Steve Carell: 1999 - 2004
• Mo Rocca: 1998 - 2003
• Dave Attell: 1999 - 2002
• Vance Degeneres: 1999 - 2001c