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Thirty years ago this week, on July 22, 1996, The Daily Show<\/a> aired its first episode. To mark Wednesday\u2019s 30th anniversary, LateNighter editor at large Bill Carter is tracing the Comedy Central series\u2019 remarkable evolution over three days. Part One explored the show\u2019s unlikely origins<\/a>. In Part Two, he turns to the Jon Stewart<\/a> era\u2014the period in which, Bill argues, The Daily Show became the most significant reinvention of late-night television since the debut of The Tonight Show in 1954.<\/p>\n Success in show business is always produced by a chemical reaction derived from the joining of two basic elements: talent and opportunity.<\/p>\n In 1999, Jon Stewart finally put the mix together. His talent by that point was abundant, and abundantly clear to those who had worked with him. Only opportunity had eluded him.<\/p>\n His late-night show for MTV<\/a>, which later moved to Paramount syndication, made an impression, but not a lasting one. A holding deal he had signed with Worldwide Pants, David Letterman<\/a>\u2019s production company, put him on the precipice of a breakthrough: Surely he was lined up to succeed Tom Snyder<\/a> in the late-night hour that followed Dave on CBS, The Late Late Show<\/a>.<\/p>\n But when that host chair came open, opportunity slipped away again. To the surprise and disappointment of many who worked with Letterman at the time, the job went to the polarizing, non-comedian host of The Daily Show, Craig Kilborn<\/a>.<\/p>\n All these years later, the chem-lab boom that decision ignited can seem foreordained. But opportunity is often a chameleon; you\u2019d better recognize the real thing when it turns up.<\/p>\n Jon Stewart, as he has proved ever since, has never lacked for vision.<\/p>\n Or smarts.<\/p>\n Doug Herzog<\/a>, who made the deal that put Stewart behind the Daily Show desk, had no doubts about that:<\/p>\n \u201cJon Stewart is the smartest person I have ever worked with,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with a lot of smart people on and behind the camera. I used to say, \u2018Jon is the total package.\u2019 He\u2019s as smart as they come. His instincts are impeccable.\u201d<\/p>\n And he had one overwhelming instinct about the still-emerging enterprise he was joining in 1999. \u201cHe wanted it to be his show,\u201d Herzog said.<\/p>\n Three years into its run, The Daily Show was a modest hit on a modest cable channel. Herzog estimated the network was reaching about half the television homes in America. \u201cWe were not at all considered the big leagues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But The Daily Show was as close to an established franchise as the channel possessed. Stewart walked in committed to blowing it up.<\/p>\n Showrunner Madeleine Smithberg<\/a> had become comfortable with Kilborn as host precisely because he was being steered, not steering.<\/p>\n \u201cCraig was great, but he just had no interest in what we were doing creatively,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cWe just had to put him in the chair, make sure his makeup matched, and we could say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Jon Stewart made clear from the start that he would be the one deciding everything the show would be saying.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took him only a minute,\u201d Herzog said. \u201cFirst meeting: \u2018We\u2019re not doing that MTV shit in here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Politics did not drive the show pre-Stewart. Herzog had wanted the show to do politics sparingly and concentrate on pop-culture stories. That was about to change.<\/p>\n \u201cIn comes Jon Stewart,\u201d Smithberg said, \u201cwho suddenly has opinions and a point of view, and we\u2019re like, \u2018What\u2019s this noise?\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018You don\u2019t understand. I\u2019m your boss now, and we are going to change.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Late-night television was changing with it. Stewart unflinchingly embraced what had long been the third rail of the genre: the open expression of a point of view.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we had previously was like a salad bar of points of view,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cAnd now we had a chef.\u201d<\/p>\n The chef had strong feelings about the menu and how it was going to be put together. He pounded the point that The Daily Show would change its process. No longer would the host sit in a room with the writers and kick around ideas. They would come into his office and pitch jokes and stories in teams of two.<\/p>\n \u201cHe kind of took the show apart and put it back together,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cHe really became the editor-in-chief\u2014and the show got better for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Stewart worked with the correspondents on their field pieces, finding consistent throughlines for the themes of the night. And to Stewart\u2019s\u2014and the show\u2019s\u2014great benefit, timing played a hand. The 2000 election was looming: TDS would go all in on \u201ccovering\u201d it.<\/p>\n Jen Flanz<\/a>, who joined the show in 1998 as a production assistant and is now executive producer and showrunner, said the elements synced up when Stewart took over.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I think Jon is brilliant and hilarious and really kind of a voice of a generation, and I got to see him become a legend, I would say, beyond all those things, the timing really impacted how big The Daily Show broke onto the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n The production design changed, too. \u201cWe came up with this thing we called \u2018the Ted Koppel framing,\u2019\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cWe would have the back of his head gigantic, while the people he was interviewing would be on a small screen. It just made him so big and really authoritative.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2000 election was the immediate payoff for its new authoritative voice. It turned into a full-on, multiweek farce of changing vote counts and \u201changing chads.\u201d It was a story of enormous consequence inspiring countless comic sequences.<\/p>\n \u201cWe became like a heat-seeking missile, especially in the world of politics,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cIt had always been a funny show, but it was all over the place. It was a kind of smorgasbord. It became focused. And it had a real point of view. And that point of view was not thrilled with what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n TDS skewered the inanity of the vote-counting fiasco so thoroughly and skillfully that other news organizations, including CNN and other outlets, began covering how The Daily Show was covering the story.<\/p>\n The buzz about the show was suddenly inescapable.<\/p>\n After that run, any time big news happened, an audience\u2014mostly younger, mostly uninterested in how conventional news organizations were covering it\u2014came looking for what Stewart\u2019s take was going to be.<\/p>\n That included the 9\/11 attacks and their aftermath, and perhaps more than anything else, the Iraq War, which the show pummeled nightly under the banner \u201cMess O\u2019Potamia.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAny election, any scandal, any war, we\u2019re gonna take that and process it so that our viewers can laugh about something that heavy,\u201d Flanz said.<\/p>\n The product was comedy, not news. And yet millions of younger viewers started telling people that they got their information about the nation and the world from The Daily Show.<\/p>\n And under Stewart, the show committed as much to journalistic integrity as to the joke.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to always say, \u2018Oh, don\u2019t get your news from here. You\u2019re going to miss half the jokes,\u2019\u201d Flanz said. \u201cNow I\u2019m like, \u2018You guys are getting your news from TikTok and less-verified places. There\u2019s no fact-checking on that entire network.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, please, get your news from here.\u2019 At least I know it\u2019s been checked.\u201d<\/p>\n The Daily Show checked everything, didn\u2019t take things out of context, and had no intention of deceiving anyone. What it reported on the air had to be factually accurate\u2014unless it was clearly a joke.<\/p>\n The show also installed a deeply professional research department whose main business was wielding a cudgel against hypocrisy. Any politician who made a statement contradicting an earlier position was immediately in the bullseye. The old clip would be dug up, and the politician would be exposed.<\/p>\n Stewart was a prime player in that effort. \u201cI believe he has a photographic memory,\u201d Flanz said. \u201cHe would say, \u2018I think I remember Bush said this in whatever year.\u2019 And you\u2019d go find it, and he\u2019s spot-on.\u201d<\/p>\n The hypocrisy brand became a signature of the show. Flanz described it as \u201cpointing out, no matter what side you were on, no matter which people you liked or didn\u2019t like, we were calling them out.\u201d<\/p>\n The other major throughline for the show\u2019s entire history has been finding complementary talents to its host. It has been extraordinarily good at that.<\/p>\n Ahead of this week\u2019s 30th anniversary, Flanz had some fun going back through audition tapes of the talent who chased the job of correspondent on The Daily Show. The roster of names is among the most impressive in the recent history of show business:<\/p>\n Stephen Colbert<\/a>, Steve Carell<\/a>, John Oliver<\/a>, Samantha Bee<\/a>, Ed Helms<\/a>, Jessica Williams<\/a>, Roy Wood Jr.<\/a>, Aasif Mandvi<\/a>, Rob Corddry<\/a>, Josh Gad<\/a>, and many, many more. Most have gone on to major careers in comedy.<\/p>\n \u201cI really think to get a TDS correspondent job, you have to be supremely talented and smart,\u201d Flanz said. \u201cIf we send you out into the field, you have to know the whole story. You have to improv the scene with the people you\u2019re with. You also have to have a point of view, be able to act in the studio, and use the TelePrompter. The skill set is really all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n For some new hires, the biggest surprise was discovering just how much of the job resembled actual news reporting.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve hired people over the years, and they come to me and say, \u2018Oh, I thought I was signing on for a comedy job, and now I\u2019m sitting in a newsroom.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Flanz\u2019s response: \u201cYeah, you\u2019re sitting in a newsroom. Only we make jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n And those jokes have won all kinds of awards. Among a raft of other honors, The Daily Show has won 26 Emmys, most of them during Stewart\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n But every five-star restaurant eventually faces the same question: What happens when the chef leaves the kitchen?<\/p>\n Tomorrow in Part Three: From Jon Stewart\u2019s exit and the Trevor Noah era to the uncertainty that followed\u2014and the 2024 reinvention that\u2019s made The Daily Show late night\u2019s greatest comeback story in recent memory.<\/p>\n