The Daily Show

Format

The Daily Show was originally hosted by Craig Kilborn when it premiered in 1996, but he left to take over The Late Late Show on CBS in 1999. Jon Stewart is the current host, who has a contract through the 2008 season, and is noted for heading a significant shift in the way the show handled news. The early years were filled with fairly common fare for late-night programs, including Monica Lewinsky jokes and a significant amount of material that was completely fabricated.

Related Topics:
Craig Kilborn - The Late Late Show - CBS - Monica Lewinsky

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Stewart was more interested in finding a way to process the news that he and the show staff took in on a regular basis. The juxtaposition of news stories and the reactions of the on-air talent comes from real responses that they and the show's writers have behind the scenes as they take in stories from other media sources. After a few years as host, Stewart became co-executive producer of the series.

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The show's format generally begins with a monologue and news headlines similar to the start of other late-night television programs. The Daily Show runs this portion for a longer period, and may include "on location" reports. However, the correspondents are usually just standing in the studio with a greenscreened backdrop. While generally no note is made of this fact, it is occasionally the subject of jokes, such as having a correspondent report from a press base on Mars (this joke was used when the first Mars Exploration Rover landed). Introductions and on-screen graphics always label the same four reporters as "senior" specialists in the subject at hand, sometimes with absurdly specific expertise. A given reporter may be "Senior Palestinian Analyst" one day, "Senior Agricultural Reporter" a few days later, "Senior Papal Vacancy Expert" the next week, and for the Michael Jackson trial, "Senior Jackologist" then "Senior Child Molestation Expert". The show formerly split the news into segments known as "Headlines" and "Other News," though these titles were dropped sometime around 2003.

Related Topics:
Monologue - Greenscreen - Mars - Mars Exploration Rover

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Stewart and company have fine-tuned a technique of intercutting commentary with footage of political figures making speeches or statements, in which the host or correspondent can stop the action at a telling moment, and register skeptical reserve or excruciated dismay, as political clichés, dud imagery, or oxymoronic statements hang lifelessly in the air. The results include some of the most pointed political satire broadcast in the United States.

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Following the regular news portion, there are correspondent pieces and interviews, the order of which can vary from episode to episode. Correspondent pieces involve the show's members actually traveling to a remote location to make a report or interview people important to the story. Topics can be very wide-ranging, and these segments have gained quite a bit of notoriety. Often when a Daily Show correspondent has come through a town to report on some issue, the event is noted by the local media.

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Some segments occur periodically, such as "Mark Your Calendar," "Ed Helms's Digital Watch," "Back in Black" with Lewis Black, "Great Moments in Punditry As Read By Children" (small children reading transcripts of contentious moments from programs like Crossfire and Hannity and Colmes), and Stephen Colbert's "This Week In God." Since the early days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a common part of the show has been "Mess O'Potamia," focusing on the troubles in that region.

Related Topics:
Lewis Black - Pundit - Crossfire - Hannity and Colmes - This Week In God - 2003 invasion of Iraq - Mess O'Potamia

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Each show ends with a "Moment of Zen" (the version on CNN International ends with the "International Moment of Zen"), which is a short, usually humorous video clip. During the Kilborn era, these clips had nothing to do with the news. Sometime after Stewart joined, most Moments of Zen became an extended clip from one of the stories aired during the show, though sometimes it is just a strange video pulled down from the newswires.

Related Topics:
Zen - Newswire

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