How did ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’ fare in early ratings?

Throughout the majority of the pre-show hype for “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” the one thing that we kept hearing time and time again were a series of grumpy people (mostly either in the media or on Twitter) saying that “he’s no Jon Stewart.” Well, the funny thing is that based on the first ratings that are out for his premiere episode on Comedy Central, he’s actually stronger than the show’s former host … at least if you roll all of the networks into one.

The premiere of the new show Monday, per Entertainment Weekly, had at least 7.5 million viewers watch at least a minute of it. It’s hard to really compare that to Stewart’s final show, which drew 3.5 million viewers live. Noah drew around 1.1 million to Comedy Central, but remember here that there were so many options across the map that rendered watching on the typical network useless. He did bring a younger demographic along with him, so there is something that is great about his debut no matter how you slice it. These are the same “young people” that network executives claim don’t watch TV anymore.

It is going to take some time for Noah’s success to really be measured in anything, and there is one thing that the network is going to need to give him: Time. We found the premiere episode funny, but there were moments here and there (including the interview) that still need work. We feel like he’ll get there if the network believes in him and if people keep watching. He just can’t lose some of that confidence and playful swagger that he had on night one.

We’re not going to be giving nightly reviews of “The Daily Show,” but we will keep an eye on it for some time.

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