Jon Stewart‘s old desk is happy to have him.
On Monday night, 1.3 million viewers tuned into Comedy Central to see Stewart host “The Daily Show” for the second time since the surprise announcement of his return. That marks the highest viewership the show has seen on its home network since Stewart’s final episode in 2015, after which Trevor Noah took over as host until his own exit in 2022.
It should be noted that this comparisons refers to viewership on Comedy Central alone. Though some post-2015 episodes of “The Daily Show” have totaled above 1.3 million viewers, none reached that height without the advantage of simulcasting on other Paramount-owned networks, which Monday’s telecast did not do.
For example, Stewart’s initial return on Feb. 12 hit a strong 1.9 million viewers across Comedy Central, CMT, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop and TV Land, but only 930,000 of those viewers came from Comedy Central, meaning that Stewart’s second episode made a 35% improvement by that metric. In terms of ratings, the episode was also up 62% among young adults aged 18-34, jumping from a 0.13 to a 0.22.
These figures, drawn from Nielsen’s Live + Same Day data, also exclude streaming, where “The Daily Show” continues to perform well. According to first-party data from Paramount Global regarding streams on Paramount+, Stewart’s return episode brought total viewership from 1.9 million to just over 3 million viewers after three days of multiplatform viewing, and it’s likely that his second episode will see similar growth.