Jon Stewart is sticking around for another year, just a week after he predicted a “bloodletting” from his new billionaire Skydance boss David Ellison.
Paramount, now a Skydance Corporation, announced Monday that The Daily Show host will continue to host the show on Comedy Central every Monday night through December 2026. He’ll also continue to executive producing the series until then, under the one-year extension. He agreed to the same arrangement in October 2024, when he signed an extension to host through December 2025.
Stewart said on his Weekly Show podcast last month that he believes there will be a “bloodletting at Paramount” in the very near future—and indeed CBS News did see major staffing cuts last week. The ominous statement was the most concrete version of Stewart’s uncertainty about the future of his show amid Paramount’s merger with Skydance and his new boss David Ellison’s perceived fealty move in settling Trump’s 60 Minutes lawsuit.
In July, Stewart said he didn’t even know if the show would survive the merger itself. “They haven’t called me and said like, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that office, Stewart,’” he joked at the time, “but let me tell you something, I’ve been kicked out of sh–tier establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet.”
He added, “They may sell the whole f—ing place for parts, I just don’t know… we’ll deal with it when we do.”
Before Paramount announced Monday that Stewart would remain by the Daily Show desk one day a week for another year, the host had taken a shot at Ellison, whose Skydance is pursuing an acquisition Warner Bros. Discovery. The merger would give Ellison HBO, Warner Bros. Studios, and more in addition to CNN after his makeover of CBS News, at which he’s already installed MAGA-sympathizer Bari Weiss. Prior to Weiss’ ascent, CBS axed Trump-nemesis Stephen Colbert, which didn’t seem to bode well for Stewart.
He joked on his Weekly Show, “Just one guy controls all of the media—what could go wrong?”
“I have always said my complaint with the media is that there’s just too many different aspects of it. And if we all just shared the same IP, we all become one. Isn’t that what diversity, equity, and inclusion is all about?” he quipped.
He’s been clear that he will continue to voice his criticisms of the company on his show should he remain on air, even though, told New Yorker editor David Remnick at last week’s New Yorker Festival, “We’re working on staying.”
“They’ve already done things that I’m upset about. But then if I had integrity, maybe I would stand up and go, ‘I’m out.’ Or maybe the integrity thing to do would be to stay in it and keep fighting in the foxhole,” he explained. But in the meantime, Stewart summed up his plans like this: “You don’t compromise on what you do, and you do it until they tell you to leave.”
Despite his fiery critiques of his parent company, The Daily Show‘s growing reach likely factored into Paramount’s decision to keep the host’s platforms. According to Comedy Central, The Daily Show had a “record-breaking third quarter” and its “highest quarterly rating in four years and biggest share in 10 years.”
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