The Daily Show

The Daily Show is the longest-running program on Comedy Central and has won 26 Primetime Emmy Awards. It premiered on July 22, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn as The Daily Show until December 17, 1998. Stewart then hosted The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from January 11, 1999, until August 6, 2015; he turned the show away from Kilborn's pop-culture focus toward political and news satire. Stewart was succeeded by Trevor Noah, who hosted The Daily Show with Trevor Noah from September 28, 2015, until December 2022. After Noah left, the show was led by a rotating cast of guest hosts. On February 12, 2024, Stewart returned to host Monday shows while correspondents rotated hosting duties for the other weekdays. Stewart, who originally signed on to host through the fall 2024 elections, later extended his contract into 2028.

The program has been popular among young audiences. The Pew Research Center suggested in 2010 that 74% of regular viewers were between 18 and 49, and that 10% of the audience watched the show for its news headlines, 2% for in-depth reporting, and 43% for entertainment; compared with respectively 64%, 10% and 4%, who said the same of CNN. In 2015, The Daily Show's median age of viewership was 36 years old. Between 2014 and 2023, the show's ratings declined by 75%, and its average viewer age increased to 63. In 2023, the viewership for age range of 25–54-year-olds was 158,000 and the viewership for 18–34-year-olds was 30,000.