Jon Stewart’s Daily Show’ Return Averaged More Than 3 Million Viewers

The final numbers are in: Jon Stewart’s February 12 return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show averaged more than 3 million total viewers across the night in Nielsen’s Live+3 numbers, which include simulcasts and the encore.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was No. 1 across all cable (originals and encores) at 11 p.m. in key demos and total viewers, according to Nielsen results. It posted triple-digit growth versus Trevor Noah’s final show; it was up 116% to 374,000 among adults 18-49; up 129% to 498K among adults 25-54; and up 129% to 1.65 million among total viewers.

It was the Daily Show‘s biggest premiere audience since August 2017.

Comedy Central also added that Stewart’s return ranked as the No. 1 “news program” in cable across extended prime among adults 18-49 and adults 25-54, besting Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

Stewart returned after almost nine years to host the show Monday nights on Comedy Central through the presidential election. He had said “very much wanted to have some place to unload thoughts as we get into this election season,” which likely will include a rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump for the U.S. presidency.

Stewart kicked off his return last week saying “Now where was I? I’m excited to be back. Why am I back, you may be asking yourselves, it’s a very reasonable question. I have committed a lot of crimes and from what I understand, talk show hosts are granted immunity. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but take it up with the founders.”

“We’re going to have so much to talk about this year; the elections, maybe we’ll talk about China, AI, something a little lighter, Israel-Palestine,” he continued.