Jon Stewart is the host of The Daily Show or
he was during its heyday, during its peak.
In this video I want to break down
some lessons that can be learned from
his career, taking over The Daily Show
and then leaving it.
This is inspired by the book Daily Show
an Oral History which you can check out.
It's on audible or anywhere, I listened to the
audiobook of it. So here we go. Three
lessons from Jon Stewart's time at The Daily Show.
Number one is: people hate change.
John came into The Daily Show he was
taking over for some other guy that had
run it for one season and during that
one season it was as successful as it
possibly could be. The guy that was
hosting Daily Show got poached by one of
the big three networks to become a
late night host. So that shows you how
good the the hosting of the show was.
When Jon Stewart came in to host this
Daily Show it was not a news show
per say. It was more of like a comedy show,
similar to what was on Saturday Night
Live. Coming up on today's show
husband and wife team Renee Taylor and
Joe Bologna are here. They have a new
movie out and we explore the nuances. The
debate was, fun but our team coverage is
fun times 3. Plus Michael Blieden unlocks
another music video secret, but first
lather, rinse, repeat. Headlines! So John had
to pivot this show to his dream. And one
of the main things that he came up
against was everybody on the show or
most of the people were against Jon
from the start. They had their own
click and they were trying to get Jon
to host the old style Daily Show and he
had to fight and actually fire most of
the people that were there in order to
get them to pivot to the Daily Show as
it became. So once he had this
show it became one of the biggest shows
ever.
It made Comedy Central household name. He
had this platform, he was very successful
and at the height of the show Jon Stewart
decided that he wanted to leave the show
for a few months and direct a movie. This
movie was called Rosewater. It was about this
Iranian filmmaker who gets detained and
beat up in Iran. And Jon Stewart
wanted to leave the show and the
people in charge of the show and Comedy Central
would not let him leave. He
had to negotiate very hard to get this,
but he built the platform and he did
leave the show to live his dream to
become a movie director because he felt
like he needed to do it. So the
bigger rule there is nothing lasts
forever.
Jon Stewart could have easily just sat at
the helm of the Daily Show forever until
he died and he decided that he wanted to
go direct this movie and then come
back. And that actually leads us right to
the next point which is keep going. This
is the final point. Jon Stewart, when
he was off directing this movie he put
John Oliver who is the
british comedian in charge of the Daily
Show for a summer, for 2, 3 months and
those shows were extremely highly rated.
They were funny. I actually saw him live
when he was doing his Daily Show
back when I was living in New York.
So he was hosting the
show and it was getting great reviews.
Jon Stewart knew at this point that he
wanted to leave the Daily Show and he
was prepping John Oliver to take over
when HBO gave John Oliver a much bigger
deal to come to their network. So the
Daily Show lost its host, it lost its
replacement host. Jon Stewart still wanted to
leave and the thing is. Here's the big
lesson here. Jon stewart could have given
up the search. He was leaving
anyway, he could have been okay
Comedy Central you guys figure it out.
Doesn't really matter to me I'm retiring
in a few weeks, but instead he went out and he
found Trevor Noah.
He found another replacement
host for him. So that just goes to show
you keep going. Jon Stewart is
out there he is living his other dream, he
is directing, doing other stuff, but he
didn't want the show to die and he
didn't let it die. So those are some
lessons I learned from Jon Stewart. Feel
free to check the book out, let me know
what you think and I'll talk to you
later. If you need support for your
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for more B2B sales training. I'm Alex
Berman. Thanks! :)