‘Daily Show’ audience slipping with Noah as host

Trevor Noah seems to be on borrowed time at Comedy Central.

The man who replaced Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show” on Sept. 28, 2015, has seen half the show’s audience disappear in a year.

Having started off with more than 1 million viewers, Noah has slipped to 810,000, compared to the 1.9 million viewers Stewart had before he went off the air in August 2015.

TV industry sources say Noah would have been replaced already if Comedy Central hadn’t already pulled the plug on “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore,” which had equally dismal ratings, but less of a millennial following on social media.

“They just lost Larry Wilmore. They certainly do not want to have another show to replace,” Marc Berman, editor-in-chief of Programming Insider, told me. “And Trevor Noah is representative of
the much-needed diversity the late-night landscape is sorely lacking.”
Trevor Noah | Page 4 | Page Six
A Comedy Central spokeswoman said: “We are 100 percent behind Trevor and are very pleased with the way ‘The Daily Show’ is performing. In its first year, it’s already the No. 1 late-night show
for millennial men (18-34, 18-24) and No. 2 to [Jimmy] Fallon among all millennials.”

Particularly galling to Comedy Central execs is the way TV critics fawned over weekly late-night hosts John Oliver (“Last Week Tonight” on HBO) and Samantha Bee (“Full Frontal” on TBS).

One insider said, “Outside of the bubble television critics live in, ‘The Daily Show’ is demonstratively more popular, more shared and more talked about than ‘Full Frontal.’ ”