Jon Stewart gets top honors as a comedian with Mark Twain Prize for humor

Apple TV+ "The Problem With Jon Stewart" host and producer, Jon Stewart wins the Mark Twain Prize for humor for his achievements on "The Daily Show" and activism.

Jon Stewart is well known for his political satire and achievements on "The Daily Show." He received the Mark Twain Prize, one of comedy's top honors, because of his long career of satirical political comedy and activism for veterans and 9/11 emergency workers.

According to The New York Times, Jon Stewart is the first to receive the award since Dave Chappelle in 2019. The awards had been delayed for the previous two years due to the pandemic.

The award ceremony had many of Stewart's peers appear on stage or video call to congratulate him or offer a light roast. His impact on comedy and political satire can be felt even today through many shows that mimic "The Daily Show" format like "Last Week Tonight" or "The Colbert Report."

Jon Stewart's career spans multiple decades as he took over "The Daily Show" in 1999 and held the spot until 2015. He continued his work as an activist in the background for years but ultimately returned to the small screen for a topical news series on Apple TV+, called "The Problem With Jon Stewart."

Rather than focus on daily news or recent reports, "The Problem With Jon Stewart" tackles one major topic every episode with interviews and panels discussing the topic. His debut episode, "The Problem With War," was a continuation of Stewart's fight for veterans to get the care they deserve.

The new show is seemingly off to a rough start, with some pundits pointing to Stewart's previous success at "The Daily Show" for reference to the new show's failures. However, Stewart remains excited for the Apple TV+ show as he has said Apple not only renewed it for season two, but upped the overall episode order.

Apple doesn't share information like subscriber numbers, or episode view counts, but a report after the first episode of "The Problem With Jon Stewart" suggested it outperformed Apple's other unscripted show, "The Oprah Conversation." Given this report and the season two renewal, it seems performant enough for Apple.

"Comedy doesn't change the world, but it's a bellwether," Mr. Stewart said. "We're the banana peel in the coal mine."

Subscribers can watch every episode of the first season of "The Problem With Jon Stewart" on Apple TV+. There is also a companion podcast that takes a deeper dive into the show's topics available on all of the popular podcasting platforms.

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10 Comments

mknelson 1146 comments · 9 Years

About 2 years ago

Well deserved - his humour tends to be more intelligent and thought provoking - kind of like Samuel Clemens'.

22july2013 3725 comments · 11 Years

So the rumours of Jon Stewart's death have been great exaggerated.

davgreg 1046 comments · 9 Years

Jon Stewart was past his prime when he left The Daily Show and Apple paid top Dollar for a has been.
His show is tanking.

Marvin 15336 comments · 18 Years

davgreg said:

Jon Stewart was past his prime when he left The Daily Show and Apple paid top Dollar for a has been.
His show is tanking.

He still has the presenting skills but there are issues with the writers, subject matter and studio setup on the new show.

It's expected to be a comedy show and some episodes it's "now here's someone with cancer". The lighting in the studio is bad and the audience never seemed very responsive, they are supposed to be like a live laugh track.

In the behind the scenes views, it's clear the writing staff are a big problem. He needs to replace the entire writing team, focus on funny and not depressing subjects, avoid roundtables with members of the public, they aren't entertainers and get a better set designer.

Celebrity guests, good material, good set. There's so many things he can talk about and one topic per show isn't engaging. It doesn't have to exclude the depressing stuff but that should be contained to a small segment of the show.

This site says the first episode had 180k US viewers and the last episode 40k vs 844k for John Oliver:

https://www.thewrap.com/the-problem-with-jon-stewart-ratings-apple-plus/

The numbers will be partly due to the current reach of Apple TV+ but having viral episodes with interesting topics and personalities would fix it no problem. His podcast segments on Youtube have been more interesting and entertaining than the main show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjPl-YW6Hc

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheProblemWithJonStewart/videos

chasm 3592 comments · 10 Years

Well deserved.

Like all great comedians, he has spoken much truth to power.

This honour should help get "The Problem"'s numbers up, it is a show worth watching. Yes, John Oliver's is "funnier," but it also wastes a lot of time with fun-but-pointless stuff like the Pringles jokes, because it assumes its audience only have a very limited attention span for serious (which, to be fair, seems to be an accurate assessment).

Stewart is attempting to give people a show that really digs into the big topics (and problems) of the day without being no fun to watch whatsoever, and trying to assume its audience are intelligent, thoughtful adults. That's a pretty tall order in the f-ed up, hell-bent-on-destruction world in which we currently live. Will he be successful without having to do "clown" segments or deal with the vapid talking heads that populate the rest of the enterainment-news sphere? Maybe not, but I'd rather he try and fail doing it his way than putting on a "show" to maybe sneak in a "bit" about democracy dying around the world, or 60 seconds (only!) on the utter immorality of for-profit healthcare ...