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\t\t\t\t\t\tCraig Kilborn, flanked by Daily Show co-creators Madeleine Smithberg and Lizz Winstead. (Photo: Madeleine Smithberg)\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago this week, on July 22, 1996, The Daily Show <\/a>aired its first episode. To mark the occasion, LateNighter editor at large Bill Carter is tracing the Comedy Central series\u2019 remarkable evolution over three days leading up to Wednesday\u2019s 30th anniversary. He begins at the beginning\u2014with the unlikely collection of executives, producers, and performers who created the show, the obstacles they encountered along the way, and everything that happened before Jon Stewart arrived.<\/p>\n Doug Herzog<\/a>, newly installed as president of Comedy Central, walked in the door looking for what he called \u201ca home-base, flagship\u201d program for the channel, which was, at that point, \u201ca ragtag collection of Gallagher specials, Cheech and Chong movies, and Benny Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n None of that was drawing any ratings; worse, none of it was \u201cgiving viewers our comedic take on the world.\u201d Herzog knew where he wanted CC to make its mark. \u201cI was obsessed with late night, Carson first, then Letterman.\u201d Finding a multi-night-a-week late-night show was, for him, a white whale.<\/p>\n Comedy Central did have a late-night franchise in Bill Maher\u2019s Politically Incorrect<\/a>, but Herzog didn\u2019t see political comedy as the channel\u2019s identity. He saw a \u201cguidepost\u201d in ESPN\u2019s SportsCenter, then the hottest show on cable, with a nightly take on the world from a lighter, more fun-and-games, pop-culture perspective.<\/p>\n Besides, two weeks into the job, Herzog learned Maher had signed, without notifying his current employers, to move his show to ABC. Done deal. \u201cI was like, f*ck that,\u201d Herzog said.<\/p>\n The pressure to find a new format ratcheted up. Herzog knew he needed a leader for his daily take-on-the-world show, and one with a \u201cperfect pedigree\u201d happened to be in-house.<\/p>\n Every late-night insider knew who Madeleine Smithberg<\/a> was. She had been a key player in David Letterman<\/a>\u2019s breakout success on NBC\u2019s Late Night with David Letterman<\/a>, producing the regularly hilarious oddball-guest segments\u2014among them \u201cKamarr the Discount Magician<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRena Smaha and Her Monkey Friends<\/a>\u201d\u2014that helped define Letterman\u2019s brand. She followed that by serving as showrunner on Jon Stewart<\/a>\u2019s first late-night show, which began on MTV and later moved to Paramount syndication.<\/p>\n Smithberg was developing an idea for Comedy Central, a weekly Larry Sanders<\/a>-esque show about a fictional cable network. She had less-than-zero interest in running another daily comedy series. \u201cI turned Doug down four times,\u201d Smithberg said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe told me, \u2018You\u2019ll never do it. You can\u2019t afford it,\u2019\u201d Herzog said. \u201cThat was the reason the Stewart show didn\u2019t continue on MTV.\u201d<\/p>\n Herzog tried every other producer he could think of, including Dick Clark<\/a>. The persistent response: \u201cYou guys can\u2019t beat the networks. Why even try?\u201d<\/p>\n But then came the encounter both parties agree directly led to the show, in which Herzog confronted Smithberg in a hallway at Comedy Central and pinned her to a wall\u2014not at all in a \u201cMe Too way,\u201d Smithberg assures.<\/p>\n Herzog told her: \u201cI\u2019m gonna give it a year, no pilot. We\u2019re gonna put it on, keep at it till we get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n The show would get 90 percent of Comedy Central\u2019s production budget and 95 percent of its promotion budget. And it would be guaranteed to stay on for a full year.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat idiot would say no to that?\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cNot me!\u201d<\/p>\n Herzog could not have been more all-in. \u201cI had decided it was our destiny. I was an evangelist about it. This was what we had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Smithberg had formed a creative partnership with a fellow resident of her apartment building on West 20th Street, Lizz Winstead<\/a>. They would be the co-creators of The Daily Show: Winstead as head writer, Smithberg as showrunner.<\/p>\n Next step: a host. A huge fan of SportsCenter, Herzog had seen Craig Kilborn<\/a> lead the late-night edition. \u201cHe was funny. He had a kind of faux Dennis Miller<\/a> delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n All parties were highly interested. But the first meeting with Kilborn became notorious at The Daily Show. Herzog recalled: \u201cCraig comes in, sits down, and says, \u2018Any of you guys work at MTV? Do you know Julie Brown?\u2019\u201d\u2014meaning Downtown Julie Brown, the MTV VJ\u2014\u201c\u2018You know, I love the Brown sugar.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It looked to Herzog like Winstead was about to leap over the coffee table to strangle Kilborn. But he somehow turned it around, Herzog said. \u201cBy the end, he had them thinking: We don\u2019t love him, but we think he can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Smithberg said, \u201cCraig had authority and great timing. We kind of thought of him as our Ted Baxter. You just had to write him in a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n Just before the launch, Herzog decided they should do some test shows and put them in front of focus groups for reactions. Not a great idea.<\/p>\n \u201cThey hated the show with a red-hot heat,\u201d Herzog said. \u201cThey hated Craig. They hated the idea. They\u2019d never watch this.\u201d Herzog drove home that night in a dark place.<\/p>\n Not Smithberg. \u201cThey knew me really well,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t think of anything worse than listening to people who know nothing.\u201d So, to get her through the detestable focus group, \u201cThey got me a massage therapist and a bottle of Dom P\u00e9rignon. Outside the two-way glass, I was on the table getting a massage and sipping champagne.\u201d<\/p>\n The brutal opinions of the focus group changed nothing, Smithberg said. \u201cExcept my shoulders felt a little better.\u201d<\/p>\n The show premiered on July 22, 1996, at 11:30 p.m. Politically Incorrect was still airing at 11 and would remain there until Maher left for ABC in November.<\/p>\n The immediate reviews were surprisingly positive, especially considering the focus-group reactions and the unusual\u2014bizarre seems a better word\u2014decision to produce the show without an audience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought, Lizz and I, that having an audience would diminish our importance,\u201d Smithberg recalled. \u201cAnd that was beneath us because we were just so intellectually superior.\u201d<\/p>\n Herzog remembered: \u201cThey said a newscast doesn\u2019t have an audience. I said, it\u2019s a comedy show. It needs laughs. In those first shows, without an audience, the only person you would hear laugh was a producer. It used to make me crazy, this one little hollow laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n Herzog begged to be humored. He told them: \u201cLet\u2019s try this with an audience, and if you guys don\u2019t like it, we won\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Smithberg and Winstead agreed to the test, though the location gave them some pause. The show rented the studio used by Sally Jessy Raphael\u2019s daytime talk show.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we got the Sally Jessy Raphael audience,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cThey were loading them in with a guy with a megaphone saying, \u2018Anyone with a walker, to the right! With mobility, to the left!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In front of that crowd, they put on a show using the same script and taped bits they\u2019d used during the previous evening\u2019s audience-free taping. \u201cIt was so daytime,\u201d Smithberg said. \u201cEverything on the set was pink. And there\u2019s Kilborn up there.\u201d<\/p>\n Still: \u201cAbout, I would say, six minutes in, we said, \u2018OK, you can stop. Doug, you were right.\u2019\u201d Herzog says it took three minutes.<\/p>\n They got laughs. It was a comedy show, not a news show.<\/p>\n Smithberg had never doubted the show was funny. From the beginning, the \u201cfield pieces\u201d from the \u201ccorrespondents\u201d captured the tone they were going for: the deadest of deadpan. In the first episode, original correspondent Brian Unger<\/a> did a piece about \u201cPrincess Kitty,\u201d a famed commercial-acting cat star, and her devoted \u201cmother.\u201d<\/p>\n Unger never broke his \u201cmock seriousness,\u201d Smithberg said. Sounding like a reporter for CBS\u2019s Sunday Morning, Unger intoned mournfully: \u201cShe had a fan club that adored her and press that likened her to Mary Tyler Moore.\u201d<\/p>\n Another regular early feature, \u201cFive Questions,\u201d became part of the show\u2019s main interview segment after Kilborn came in one morning following a date and said he had asked the young woman five questions. \u201cOne was: What does peripatetic mean?\u201d<\/p>\n Smithberg told him: \u201cThat\u2019s going into the show. We\u2019re going to do that segment in all our interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n She still remembers one question she came up with: \u201cIs it sock\/sock; shoe\/shoe? Or is it sock\/shoe; sock\/shoe? I relive it every time I put shoes on.\u201d<\/p>\n The show made noise; it gained traction. Stephen Colbert<\/a> was added to the correspondent roster a year in. Comedy Central had earlier given him a temporary job writing promos because he\u2019d just had a baby and needed medical insurance, Herzog said.<\/p>\n The show somehow survived the media backlash after Kilborn, in late 1997, gave a magazine interview in which he demeaned Winstead with a sexual innuendo. Herzog suspended him. Winstead demanded that he be fired and walked off the show when he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Upon reflection, Herzog says he spent too much time worrying about losing the momentum the show had built up and \u201cnot enough about protecting Lizz, which I certainly regret.\u201d<\/p>\n That display of loyalty to the show\u2019s star did not wind up helping when CBS decided to poach Kilborn to host The Late Late Show<\/a> following Letterman. CBS\u2019s then-top executive, Les Moonves<\/a>, called to tell Herzog he had to let Kilborn go immediately, even though he still had time left on his contract.<\/p>\n Herzog was \u201creally pissed, and I felt betrayed.\u201d He saw no obligation to help out CBS\u2014or the star his network had made.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, he\u2019s not going anywhere until I find a new host,\u201d Herzog said. Moonves pushed anyway and planned to announce Kilborn as CBS\u2019s new late-night star, paired with Letterman.<\/p>\n \u201cHe tried to book Kilborn for CBS\u2019s upfront presentation while he was still under contract to Comedy Central,\u201d Herzog recalled. \u201cIt ended up with Craig being turned away at the door to Carnegie Hall\u2014because a judge ruled in our favor.\u201d<\/p>\n The win was only temporary. The Daily Show needed a new host. They auditioned, among others, Mike Rowe, David Alan Grier<\/a>, and Michael McKean<\/a>.<\/p>\n The problem was abruptly solved, partly through the awkward position in which Smithberg suddenly found herself. Letterman quietly pitched her on coming over to produce Kilborn\u2019s Late Late Show for Worldwide Pants, his production company.<\/p>\n Did Herzog know she was also being poached? \u201cMaybe not until he reads my book,\u201d she said. Smithberg\u2019s notably hilarious memoir, Finding the Funny<\/a>, will be published early next year.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it turned out well for Doug,\u201d she said. Because when Smithberg needed advice about whether to make the jump to CBS, she decided to call a friend.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do I do?\u201d she asked Jon Stewart.<\/p>\n Smithberg recounted how Stewart methodically walked her through her quandary.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you proud of The Daily Show?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs it a new way to deliver comedy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you look forward to going to work?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, I\u2019m really excited every time I open the newspaper and see what\u2019s happening, and I trot off to work to make hay.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like the people you work with?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, I love them. I hired them all. They\u2019re adorable.\u201d<\/p>\n Smithberg said no to Dave.<\/p>\n Doug Herzog had not even thought to offer the job to Stewart. \u201cIn my mind, he would wind up at HBO or CBS.\u201d<\/p>\n But he got a call from Stewart\u2019s agency. Jon might be interested.<\/p>\n A lunch in Greenwich Village was set up. \u201cJon clearly had an opinion about the show. He articulated a broad vision. And he basically said yes. Right there,\u201d Herzog said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all raced out of there, jumped in a cab up to James Dixon<\/a>\u2019s office, and started working on a deal.\u201d Dixon is the fabled \u201cBaby Doll\u201d of late night, manager to Stewart, Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel<\/a>, and many more.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were absolutely over the moon. We had a second bite at the apple of a Jon Stewart late-night show,\u201d Herzog said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trajectory of The Daily Show changed. And we never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n Tomorrow in Part Two: Jon Stewart arrives at The Daily Show and begins reshaping it in his own image.<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784542630_981_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
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