She could be in better shape after all of that training for the X-Men movie. Maybe lost some fullness in her face?
Seeing her in profile was different for me. I generally recognize her eyes, but her makeup seemed different, or maybe she was just wide-eyed in the few frontal glimpses of her face. I didn’t recognize her at first but got it after Jon said her name. I’m not good with faces though, changing the key feature I go by can throw me way off.
I suppose Jon Bon Jovi was busy.
Just read that Jon Stewart’s final show pulled its biggest audience ever, bigger than the Obama appearances. The size of said audience? 3.5 million viewers. This is less than the audience for the most recent episode of “Running Wild with Bear Gryllis”. Wow. So basically hardly anyone watched this show, despite the fact that the media (and social media) environment I’ve been steeped in made it seem like EVERYONE watched it.
Is that the audience who saw it on its first airing? Does it include those of us who watched it the next day when Comedy Central re-ran it? Or those who watched it on line?
It’s live+SD, the most commonly used ratings metric. The live + 3 Day rating was a total of 5 million if I remember right, but the number I gave for the Bear Gryllis show was also the live and same day, so apples to apples. And let’s remember that this was their highest rated episode ever, whereas the Bear Gryllis was not a finale or anything, and not even a show I had ever heard anything about despite keeping up with many TV critics on Twitter and elsewhere (I only learned of its existence when trying to find an obscure show that got slightly better numbers than this episode).
I have to assume the audience the show got before the finale and when President Obama was not on had to be very low, so low that it would get a show on network TV that you never heard of instantly cancelled. Yet in the online and real life circles I travel in, it seems like Jon Stewart is a huge celebrity that everyone watches. It’s really interesting to think of the mass numbers of sort of silent majority types that barely even know who he is.
Well, I have no idea who Bear Gryllis is, so I guess that says something…
I have vaguely heard of him (he’s some sort of tough survival guy) but I was not aware of the existence of that show until I was perusing TV by the Numbers to get a sense of how that 3.5 million number compared to other shows. Another one that jumped out at me: it’s roughly half as many viewers as a repeat of NCIS: New Orleans got last night. A repeat! Of yet another show I had never heard of. It is so bizarre, because everyone in my Facebook and Twitter feeds talks about *TDS *constantly.
Furthermore, The Daily Show has long been touted as “where Millennials get their news”, yet (after doing a little quick research) it turns out that fewer than a million of the 80 million in that generation watch the show, and at least twice as many watch the stodgy old network news shows. It’s clear that Stewart has been a very influential figure among journalists, but among the general public hardly anyone watched him over the years.
Which makes me wonder: what does the name “Jon Stewart” mean to the 98 percent of Americans who didn’t watch him? “That guy people in the media are always going on about, but who doesn’t really interest me”? Or are they just not aware of him at all?
I haven’t had the option of watching the show for years. Of course, I’ve still been able to watch considerable chunks of it via Facebook and other secondary sources. Bet I’m not the only one.
Ah, it wouldn’t be a StraightDope thread without someone having a bizarre ax to grind.
What axe? I’m not, in case it seemed like it, the equivalent of one of those people who goes on discussion threads of *Girls *and complains “no one watches this show, it shouldn’t even be on except that the media elites are obsessed with it”. I am a liberal Democrat (just look at my recent posts in the Elections board), I enjoy The Daily Show (and *Girls *for that matter), and I even paid to watch the PPV debate between Stewart and O’Reilly last year (and I *never *order PPV).
I just think it’s kind of mind-blowing that the viewership is so paltry, given the attention paid to the show in the media and social media circles I’m connected to, and the many pronouncements that this is where Millennials get their news. We Dopers are supposed to be crusaders for truth and accuracy against the lazy dissemination of inaccurate tropes, right?
I wouldn’t compare the ratings to a weekly show like Running Wild or NCIS. I’d compare the ratings to other daily or nightly shows. People are more likely to watch every episode of a weekly show, but for a nightly show they might watch some episodes and miss others, or watch some clips later online. Jimmy Fallon is doing good when he gets above 4 million viewers.
And that the media and social media talked more about the Daily Show than Running Wild or NCIS: New Orleans isn’t trying to exaggerate the importance of the Daily Show, it’s reflecting how the Daily Show has made a bigger impact.
But how can it make a huge impact among the general public when so few of them watch it? I grant your point that the show gets perfectly fine ratings within its niche. The network and advertisers are perfectly happy, I’m sure. But that doesn’t jibe with the notion so many people have that this is where everyone under 40 is getting their news. I don’t see any of the coverage acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of Americans, including Millennials, do not watch the show. And I’d bet that among those of us who have been viewers over the years (I actually started watching it when Craig Kilborn hosted it and would ask guests wacky questions like how many times they wear pants before washing them), I’m far from the only one who would be surprised when seeing these numbers and learning that we are actually part of a small subculture that feels big because we link up with each other and see our taste reflected in a lot of media coverage.
BTW, the “people watch some episodes and miss others” doesn’t work too well when we are talking about 3.5 million for the Stewart finale. That has to have been watched by pretty much everyone with any active interest in the show at all. I only watched about two episodes a month on average (adding up to hundreds total over the years), but I certainly watched that one!
If you have access to Facebook, presumably you also have access to the official site at http://thedailyshow.cc.com/, at which full episodes are available to watch, not just “chunks.”
Doesn’t work outside the US.
I don’t, actually, because I’m overseas. Any direct links to CC-hosted clips are blocked.
OK, how about The Daily Show Global Edition? I believe that is aired on CNN International. Only once a week, but it’s better than just Facebook chunks.
Edited to add, it’s probably moot since Jon Stewart has left. But perhaps with Trevor Noah coming, the show will have a more international focus and perhaps be more widely available outside the US.
My elderly parents wouldn’t know where to find Comedy Central if their lives depended on it, but they do watch CBS Sunday Morning. They had a Mo Rocca piece (actually a rerun) last week. I don’t know what their numbers are, but at least they got exposed to Jon Stewart. No, they’re not the target audience (like others, I started watching during the Craig Kilbourn era) but they know who Jon Stewart is and why he matters to me.
How many times has Bear Gryllis shamed congress into acting? How many idiotic CNN debate shows has he shut down? How many people have ever seen or heard of the Jon Stewart and The Daily Show compared to Bear Gryllis and whatever the hell show he’s on? When he gets the Boss to play his final show we can start the comparisons.
And if your parents watch the Sunday morning political talk shows, they might be exposed to him that way. I know, for instance, that This Week with George Stephanopoulos will feature bits and clips from TDS.