‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ predictably surges upon host’s return

When Jon Stewart came back to “The Daily Show” last night after a hiatus lasting all summer (in which he was off filming his feature film “Rosewater”), you knew that the show was going to return to some pretty substantial numbers. But how big are we talking about here? Let’s just say that it managed to do the rare thing for a cable late-night show and top the 2 million viewer barrier.

Overall, the show drew 2.02 million viewers, which is an improvement of over 20% from both the year’s average so far and how the show was faring at this time last September. Stewart’s return featured not only a discussion about Syria, but a hilarious exchange with Jon Oliver that you can read more about here.

Oliver managed to actually keep the show’s ratings mostly steady during his absence, which was viewed as a pretty stellar accomplishment at the time when you consider just how popular Jon is. While there have been no real discussions yet as to his future with Comedy Central, we do still wonder whether or not we could eventually see Oliver shifting away and getting a late-night show of his own on the network. (We would certainly help to champion it.)

Are Jon’s ratings going to decrease from here on out? Probably, but Comedy Central still loves the numbers that he consistently puts up, beating most broadcast competition in the 18-49 demographic despite airing in a smaller percentage of hosts. Plus, the mountain of Emmys that he has under his belt has to speak for something.

What did you think about Jon’s first show back? If you want to read some more news when it comes to “The Daily Show,” all you have to do is visit the story over here.

Photo: Comedy Central