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Trevor Noah to Exit The Daily Show and the Future of Late Night Is More Uncertain Than Ever

Trevor Noah is marking the end of his era of The Daily Show after 7 years of being sat behind the desk that one Jon Stewart made such an indelible mark on before him. Noah announced his intentions to step down in the near future on last night’s Daily Show, mainly to return to his first love, stand-up. His exit marks an ongoing shake-up in late night this year with Full Frontal with Samantha Bee ending, Desus & Mero parting ways and ending their Showtime series, James Corden announcing his own exit from The Late Late Show, and, of course, Conan O’Brien stepping away from his legendary late night desk just last Summer.

Where does this leave late night as a format and the talent that comes with it?

Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon seem to be sticking around for the foreseeable future (as does Seth Meyers and John Oliver), Amber Ruffin, Ziwe, and Sam Jay are all still very promising upstarts doing all very different things that break the mold of Steve Allen’s Tonight Show that became the standard nearly 70 years ago. Yet, what lies ahead for any of them and late night programming in general is anyone’s guess (and that includes Lorne Michaels).

Linear TV continually being supplanted by streaming services has made the “late night” moniker more of a genre these days as opposed to being respective to the actual air time. As such, it should come as no surprise that clips of late night on YouTube often get more eyes than actual live viewers during its initial broadcast. This has created an ever growing identity crisis with what is considered to be “late night”.

Much of the content on any given network late night show these days seem much more family friendly than pre-YouTube days, especially when it comes to Fallon or Corden. Then, on the other end, there’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that uses all the freedom that comes with being on HBO shouting expletives and getting plenty graphic with jokes on every episode. In between those two are Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel who do opening monologues made digestible for the mainstream left and having the occasional “very special episode” where they get earnest, maybe even teary.

Trevor Noah’s era of The Daily Show has been markedly different from Jon Stewart’s with much more measure and poise, often bordering on an actual news show. Noah didn’t do famous takedowns of pizza, Arby’s, or Jim Cramer, but was a cleverly soothing voice of calm amidst the particularly catastrophic socio-political-cultural storm we’ve been in since 2015. That said, his seven year run falls far short of Stewart’s nearly 20 year run at The Daily Show and it feels less like the abrupt end of an era, and mark a mark of continued exploration as to what is actually going to be the direction and look and feel of late night in the 2020s and 2030s and onwards.

We’re confident that late night will endure as a genre because audiences crave some sort of comedic comfort/respite/catharsis from whatever chaos that day or week has wrought. As to how Gen Z wants to consume or who they would want to listen to, we’re, yet again, not sure.

Will Comedy Central replace Trevor? Will Comedy Central even keep The Daily Show going after he leaves? It’s all very unclear as one might rightfully ponder what Comedy Central’s future as a network might be. Inside Amy Schumer‘s latest season will be streaming exclusively on Paramount+ rather than any Comedy Central app or digital platform leaving us wondering what Paramount has in store for the network as a whole.

In the event that Comedy Central decides to continue The Daily Show, we do maintain the same stance we had when Jon Stewart stepped down regarding his replacement. Hire Cameron Esposito.