According to Deadline, The Daily Show scored its largest quarterly share in ten years. Jon Stewart (The Jon Stewart Show, The Colbert Report) left the show in August 2015, and his final two episodes helped Comedy Central gain some great numbers; he arguably changed the state of late-night.  

Deadline adds that the second quarter of 2025 was The Daily Show’s best quarterly share since the third quarter of 2015 when speaking about viewers in the 18-49 demo in live-plus-three numbers, via Nielsen data. 

This is rather surprising, considering that Stewart’s first show back in February 2024 was the most-viewed episode of the show in five years. The period of time between April and June received higher ratings than one that covers the Presidential election and Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Deadline notes. 

It is evident that the late-night cable audience is frequently engaged and interested in seeing how Stewart and his co-hosts, Desi Lydic (Stan Helsing, Space Cadet), Michael Kosta (Crowd Goes Wild, Dont’ Try This at Home), Ronny Chieng (Crazy Rich Asians, M3Gan), and Jordan Klepper (Klepper, Jordan Klepper Solves Guns), analyze the news in this current tense political environment, via Deadline. 

Ratings are up 44% from a year ago, when Stewart and Co-Hosts talked about President Biden as well as the election. The share went from 2.9 in 2024 to 4.17 in 2025. Furthermore, it was also up 15% in ratings numbers, from approximately 342,000 to 393,000, making it the best quarterly rating in four years, as mentioned by Deadline. 

Deadline states that Monday nights, the only night Stewart hosts the show, are the best performing shows for The Daily Show. Mondays scored their best share and rating since his return in the first quarter of 2024 – the share went up 43% from 4.19 to 6.01, with average ratings increasing 8% from 511,000 to 550,000. 

Because of streaming, for most linear broadcasters, the share number is more important than the hard number watching. With that said, The Daily Show is up 21% on Paramount+ as opposed to how it was a year prior, Deadline says. 

According to Comedy Central, the show was the “most viewed late-night talk show across social” in the second quarter, reaching 1.8B views over that three-month period. Nonetheless, this is difficult to quantify because it did not reveal the data and metrics of other shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Deadline finally adds.