I awoke this morning to a flurry of rumors about why Jon Stewart suddenly announced his departure from The Daily Show…
- He's pissed that he wasn't offered David Letterman's job at CBS and that it instead went to a former employee.
- He's pissed that another former employee, John Oliver, is doing so well.
- He's planning to run for public office.
I don't think any of these are true. I have no inside pipeline to Mr. Stewart's noggin…but then, neither do the folks supposing these things. He sure has never struck me as competitive with either gent in the first two rumors. In fact, since they got those gigs, he's done much to promote those former employees. (And do we know for absolute certain that Stewart wasn't offered 11:30 on CBS and turned it down?)
The public office thing seems more credible than the other two and I'm still doubtful. What public office? Stewart lives in New York and if he moved now, might be able to qualify in New Jersey, where he spent most of his childhood. Neither of those states is electing a governor in 2016 and the only Senate election in either next year would pit Stewart against incumbent Chuck Schumer in New York. That doesn't sound like an unseating that would interest the outgoing Daily Show host. I suppose the guy could run for the House of Representatives but he'd probably have more influence on public policy by continuing to be the nation's most-watched purveyor of political satire.
So I don't think Stewart has anything concrete in mind right now. There doesn't seem to be any firm notion of when he's stepping down and I think if he had another job lined up, he'd have an exit date to go with it. And if he was still dickering for that next job and it wasn't set yet, he'd wait to announce his abdication until it was. Quitting the way he has is the way you alert the industry that you're open to offers.
In other rumor news, we have stories out claiming that Brian Williams "lobbied hard" to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. I can well believe he wanted it. There aren't many host-type people who've ever gotten in front of a TV camera, especially an NBC TV camera, who haven't fantasized about getting that show. I'm a little puzzled as to when he supposedly did this.
My understanding is not that NBC decided to dump Jay, then went looking for possible hosts. Both times — for Conan and Fallon — they seemed to have decided to replace Jay because they had (they thought) the right person already on deck. They also clearly wanted a younger man and Brian Williams is 55 — younger than Leno but only by nine years — and lacking in the big Internet presence that clearly made O'Brien and Fallon so tempting.
I'm not saying this rumor is wrong. I'm suspecting it's exaggerated. There have been a few exaggerations around Brian Williams in the past few years. If I were him, I don't think my goal would be to replace Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show. I think it would be to replace Walter Cronkite as The Most Trusted Man in America. (Come to think of it, if I wanted to be that, I'd probably want to replace Jon Stewart.)