The Annenberg Public Policy Center recently released a study indicating that viewers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have a better handle on the facts of the presidential campaign than not only viewers of Leno and Letterman but also newspaper readers and most cable news viewers (!). Link to study (PDF).
Also of note is the accusation from Bill O’Reilly that Stewart’s audience is mostly “stoned slackers,” the which was undercut by Nielsen research showing that Stewart’s audience is more likely to have college degrees than O’Reilly’s. (Link, including the funny aside, “Comedy Central had no statistics on how many people watch ‘The Daily Show’ stoned.”)
I’m sure there’s a debate here, including why exactly this would be the case. (Does Stewart’s show inform people, or do already smart people gravitate to it? Probably a little of both. Plus there are opinions like this one, which suggest that Stewart’s approach of satirizing the news environment itself, rather than taking predictable jabs at the personalities based on established stereotypes, is a step up in the critical-thinking arena. There’s a very interesting breakdown of “joke type” in the Annenberg study above showing how Leno and Letterman piggyback their humor on the prevailing memes, whereas Stewart is more likely to strike out in new directions.)
But I’m not interested in a debate. I thought it was interesting and worth sharing, and would like to invite fellow Stewart viewers, whether or not you watch stoned (;)), to join in the self-satisfied preening (double ;)).
Well, Stewart and most of TDS’s humor is smarter. Leno, Letterman, and Conan all pretty much make the same jokes- Clinton is tubby and horny and Bush is stupid. Most of their jokes don’t require any knowledge of much of anything, politics included. The lowest common denominator is that everyone knows that Clinton got a BJ from a slightly overweight intern, and Bush makes verbal slips a lot.
Most of what Stewart comments on is more specific and relevant to politics. If you don’t know what’s going on in the world, you’ll be somewhat lost watching the Daily Show.
I will say that if it were not for the SDMB, the first I’d hear about many an event would be from Stewart.
About 80% of my news in takes comes from the Daily Show!!
I think it stands to reason though, as long as you’re smart enough to tell the difference between what’s shtick and what’s real. The show give a very unbiased view of the news. This being that they slam on EVERYBODY with an equal amount of vigor!!
As to why they are better informed, I know when I see a reference that I’ve not previously heard about I go out and research the issue being discussed (often here). And although I have never watched The Daily Show stoned, I am a Doper, so there is a tie-in. And sometimes my viewing is supplemented by legal intoxicants.
Is this the reason that Jon was talking about his “stoned slacker audience” on Monday night?
A few months ago, Stewart was asked (by the AP, I think) what he thought of the shockingly large number of viewers for whom the Daily Show is their primary news source.
I watch TDS. I also watch Real Time with Bill Maher. It occurs to me that the people who most need to watch these shows are precisely the demographic group that is least likely to watch them.
The power of the mighty comma.