When Jon Stewart left The Daily Show in August 2015, his final episode and its lead up helped Comedy Central to some pretty decent numbers for the man who arguably changed the state of late-night.
Stewart’s return to ratings success has been well documented but what might be surprising is that The Daily Show just scored its biggest quarterly share in ten years – since Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sent him off to the Land of Hope and Dreams.
Nielsen data shows that the second quarter of 2025 was the show’s best quarterly share since the third quarter of 2015 when it comes to viewers in the 18-49 demo in live-plus-three numbers.
It’s somewhat of a surprise given that his first show back in February 2024 was the most-watched episode of the show in five years and the period in question – April, May and June – scored higher ratings than the period that covers the Presidential election and Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
It’s clear that late-night cable viewers are consistently tuning in to see how Stewart and his co-hosts – Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, Jordan Klepper and Desi Lydic, are parsing the news in this highly-charged political environment.
This was up 44% from a year ago – when Stewart and Co. were talking about President Biden (and the election itself). The share went from 2.9 in 2024 to 4.17 in 2025. It was also up 15% in pure ratings numbers as well from an average of 342,000 to 393,000, which was its best quarterly rating in four years.
It’s also no surprise that Monday nights – the sole night that Stewart has carved out to host the show – are The Daily Show’s best performing shows. Mondays have scored its best share and rating since his return in the first quarter of last year. Share went up 43% from 4.19 to 6.01, while average ratings went up 8% from 511,000 to 550,000.
As with most linear broadcasters in this day and age (thanks to streaming), the share number is more valuable than the hard number watching. Having said that, The Daily Show is also up 21% on Paramount+ compared to one year ago.
Comedy Central also said that the show was the “most viewed late-night talk show across social” in the second quarter with 1.8B views over that three month period, but that’s hard to quantify as it did not reveal the data or metrics from other shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
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