Jon Stewart may be one of the most celebrated late-night hosts working today, but things weren’t always smooth sailing for The Daily Show veteran. On the latest episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Stewart opened up about one of the less glamorous chapters of his career: The Jon Stewart Show.
The short-lived talk show premiered in 1993 on MTV, where it enjoyed relative popularity at first. However, it wasn’t long before the series would undergo major changes. After Viacom (the then-parent company of MTV) acquired Paramount, and Arsenio Hall stepped down from The Arsenio Hall show in 1994, The Jon Stewart Show was subsequently retooled into a 60-minute, syndicated program.
Stewart told O’Brien that, following the revamp, he quickly realized the series was “gonna go down.” He described the behind-the-scenes of the show as “all over the place” and explained that they struggled to book guests as a syndicated program.
“One day, we were all in my office,” Stewart recalled. “Steve Higgins was there; he was the head writer. The door opens and it’s the booker, and he looks in with a look on his face that doctors had two weeks into the pandemic. He goes, ‘Hal Linden said no.’ And we all went, ‘What? Barney Miller’s not gonna do the show?’ And it was then that I realized, ‘Oh, I think I’m going to jump off a building.’”
According to Stewart, The Jon Stewart Show thrived on MTV, but struggled to find its footing under Paramount. “We knew this f**king thing was dead. Like, you could just see it, and you could tell two weeks into it,” he said.
“On MTV, they loved it. Because it was Beavis and Butt-Head,” Stewart said. “It was written for seven-year-olds. So, you know, it was a huge success. We go to Paramount and people were like, ‘I have no idea what the f**k this is.’”
Stewart said he recalled thinking. “This is my shot. This is it. My name is on this. This is a manifestation of who I am as an artist, as a person. If it gets rejected, I am rejected.” He revealed that the stress drove him to stop sleeping, admitting, “I was really miserable. I was drinking like a motherf**ker.”
Then one morning, after a particularly painful bout of insomnia, Stewart’s outlook on the situation completely changed. “I got up and was like, ‘I’m gonna enjoy the sh*t out of this. And I don’t care anymore,’” he told O’Brien. “It was revelatory. I felt it physically, like that relief.”
Unfortunately for Stewart, his change in attitude wasn’t enough to turn things around for The Jon Stewart Show. The series was ultimately axed in June 1995, lasting just two seasons. “The blow of the story is, they canceled it pretty soon thereafter,” he added, laughing. “The story should have been like, ‘I learned to enjoy it, and the show soared.’”
The full podcast episode is available to listen to here.
