A familiar face is returning to “The Daily Show” next month, Comedy Central announced on Wednesday.
Comedian Jon Stewart will be back behind the desk as the host and executive producer on Monday nights starting Feb. 12 through the 2024 election cycle. A rotating lineup of show regulars will host the remaining weeknights.
Mr. Stewart ruled the perch of the talk TV show for 16 years until stepping down in 2015.
Since its debut in 1996, “The Daily Show”—first hosted by Craig Kilborn, then Mr. Stewart and Trevor Noah—has skewered the left and right by making the media a character and playing it absolutely straight, no matter how ridiculous.
The show, which won an Emmy Award earlier this month for Best Talk Series, has not had a permanent host since Mr. Noah’s departure in September 2022. The show’s current correspondents are Desi Lydic, Michael Kosta, Ronny Chieng, and Jordan Klepper.
Mr. Stewart didn’t leave the show in anger and has been known to speak fondly of his time on the show.
“When you lose that structure, you’re untethered from the thing that prevents the bad mind from doing its corrupt best,” he said on the Strike Force Five podcast during the Hollywood strikes last year. “It goes south and dark really fast.”
“It’s not like I thought the show wasn’t working anymore or that I didn’t know how to do it. It was more, ‘Yup, it’s working. But I’m not getting the same satisfaction,’” he told the Guardian in 2015.
In 2022, Mr. Stewart received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
More recently, “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which debuted in 2021, was canceled on the Apple TV+ streaming service. The TV series took on topics such as climate change, racism, gun control, and mass incarceration, rubbing some critics the wrong way.
The show’s abrupt end was reportedly triggered by clashes between Mr. Stewart and Apple over topics related to China and artificial intelligence.
Comedy Central did not immediately respond to an inquiry for more information.
