DAILY SHOW VIEWERS AMONG THE BEST INFORMED

Wow, well, this is something I suspected for quite some time. However, I'm not the only person to think that the Daily Show is, in fact, the most important TV show on the air today, blogger-extraordinaire/my future sister-in-law, Lisa Rein posts good quality quicktime video clips from the Daily Show all of the time. Personally, I find I can't stomach "regular" news, but Jon Stewart and his writers have the ability to present the news in a smart, skeptical way that favors no one side of the issue more than the other. Remember, you can't simply judge balance on how many times they say something nice about the Republicans compared to the number of nice things he said about the Democrats. Are they "liberals?" Probably. But they bag on Kerry as much as they can. I feel that they'd bag on him more, but there's not that much to bag on. Bush, on the other hand, well, I won't go there. ;)

Anyway, the popular concept of just who watches the Daily Show is that they are all just college-age kids who are generally, to put it bluntly, young and stupid. Apparently, Bill O'Reilly said as much on his show when Stewart was on it. Two blurbs in IMDB's Movie & TV news page report that O'Reilly is O'wrong:

Determined not to be caught up in a spin zone created by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, Comedy Central on Monday refuted O'Reilly's assertion that the audience for the network's The Daily Show was composed of "stoned slackers." The channel extracted data from Nielsen Media Research to indicate that Daily Show host Jon Stewart's viewers are more likely to have completed college than O'Reilly's.

What's more obnoxious, but not surprising, is that, according to the IMDB article, O'Reilly explained to Jon Stewart when Stewart was on his show that:

"You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote."

WHAT a dickweed!!

But wait! There's more! More from IMDB, that is:

In a poll conducted between July 15 and Sept. 19, nearly 20,000 young adults were asked six questions about the presidential candidates' stands on various issues. Those who watched no late-night comedy shows answered 2.62 questions correctly. David Letterman's viewers answered 2.91; Jay Leno,'s 2.95; and Jon Stewart's (The Daily Show) 3.59. The results for Stewart appeared particularly striking to the pollsters, who noted that his viewers "have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers."

Ahhh, it's nice to be vindicated... Well, to a certain degree, anyway. I don't get all of my news from the Daily Show and neither should anyone else. However, I, quite religiously, spend 30 minutes, four times a week, watching Jon Stewart tell me what's really going on in the world. Hell, his show is pretty much the only reason I have cable.

DON'T WORRY C-SPAN! I STILL LOVE YOU, TOO!! :D


From IMDB's Studio Brief on 28 September 2004:

Comedy Central Unspins O'Reilly

Determined not to be caught up in a spin zone created by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, Comedy Central on Monday refuted O'Reilly's assertion that the audience for the network's The Daily Show was composed of "stoned slackers." The channel extracted data from Nielsen Media Research to indicate that Daily Show host Jon Stewart's viewers are more likely to have completed college than O'Reilly's. O'Reilly made his remarks when Stewart appeared on his show a few weeks ago. "You know what's really frightening?" O'Reilly said. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote." O'Reilly is due to face the slackers directly when he appears on Stewart's show on Oct. 7.

'Daily Show' Viewers Among Best Informed Voters

Concerns that people who receive their political information from late-night comedy shows may not be adequately familiar with the issues in order to vote knowledgeably appeared to be laid to rest Monday by a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey. In a poll conducted between July 15 and Sept. 19, nearly 20,000 young adults were asked six questions about the presidential candidates' stands on various issues. Those who watched no late-night comedy shows answered 2.62 questions correctly. David Letterman's viewers answered 2.91; Jay Leno,'s 2.95; and Jon Stewart's (The Daily Show) 3.59. The results for Stewart appeared particularly striking to the pollsters, who noted that his viewers "have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers."

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