Is Jon Stewart's voice really needed in a changed media landscape?

Indiewire

Apple TV+'s announcement earlier this week that the former Daily Show host is returning to TV as host of an “original current affairs series” comes after Stewart failed to get an HBO animated series off the ground. Stewart said goodbye to The Daily Show in August 2015 less than two months after Donald Trump took over the headlines by announcing his presidential candidacy. After 5+ years of Trump being the biggest news story, is Stewart's voice really needed? "Setting aside whether or not the series is good for Apple TV+ or bad for HBO, let us now focus on whether or not it’s good or bad for America," says Libby Hill. "Or audiences, whatever. There is no arguing that Stewart revolutionized how younger generations consumed both news and media, mastering both political theater and the skewering of journalistic failures and, maybe most importantly, cultivating a team of talent that was more than willing and able to further the craft after his retirement. Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, and John Oliver all bring different points of view to the table for their late-night news programs — so did Larry Wilmore and Wyatt Cenac before being cancelled before their time, but that’s a different rant. Stephen Colbert has now stepped into the elder statesman role formerly inhabited by Stewart, taking his talents to network television and making The Daily Show’s whole thing mainstream and easily consumable for our parents. If, and or when, Jon Stewart returns to TV he needs to bring with him a different insight into the world than he used to offer. We’ve moved on. We’ve lived through Trump (so far)(also, barely). We don’t need another older white guy named Jimmy (or John) cracking wise about how screwed up things are. We have plenty already. Because we’re now living in an age where the president tells such shameless, blatant lies on such a regular basis that regular news coverage requires chyrons that would have been right at home on the Bush-era Daily Show. This is not the same media landscape Stewart left in 2015. This is the thunderdome. Give us a narrative we haven’t been fed a thousand times before or get out of the way. (Also, this unnamed, unscheduled show sounds like, a lot, like Last Week Tonight except an hour long so maybe address that in the meantime.)"