Since it’s easier to moan than to be positive, I thought it was worth giving kudos to Comedy Central UK who are bringing the regular daily edition of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart back to the UK screens from the end of next month.
You may recall that it used to air nightly on More4, Tuesday to Fridays, 24 hours after broadcast. But back at the end of 2010, they announced that they were dropping the nightly version. Instead we were left with the “best of” weekly version aka The Global Edition. The trouble with this is that we lost three quarters of everything they did.
Viewers in the UK either had to make do with the Global Edition, shunted away into late night on More4, a station that’s evolving away from what it started out as being. They could buy episodes on iTunes, or gain access via less, er, conventional routes.
Now it’ll be back on Comedy Central Extra on a nightly basis at 10.30pm which is perhaps a better time. Yes it clashes with Newsnight, but that’s what PVRs are for. Sadly we’re not getting The Colbert Report just yet, but I’m sure that Comedy Central will be looking carefully at their ratings and if enough people watch, then perhaps, perhaps.
But in the meantime this is excellent news – especially in an election year. In many ways The Daily Show is easily the best way to really get under the skin of what’s happening during their electoral cycle, consistently providing a fuller picture than any number of other outlets. I mean, do you really want to watch Piers Morgan on CNN?
Now if Comedy Central UK could just make sure that UK viewers will be able to see the extended versions of interviews that are ending up exclusively online with greater frequency, that’d just be wonderful.