Jon Stewart: TV Mogul

Jon Stewart: TV Mogul
Tue Feb 15, 4:30 PM ET
By Josh Grossberg

Comedy Central is banking on fans wanting more than a daily dose of Jon Stewart. Literally. TV's anti-Walter Cronkite has obtained financing from his home base cable network to resurrect his long-dormant Busboy Production shingle. In exchange, Stewart will give Comedy Central first crack at picking up all the projects it develops, network president Doug Herzog announced Tuesday.

Stewart will run the company with Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin, a former Onion editor who joined the fake news anchor's staff in 1993, became head writer in 1999 and with whom Stewart cowrote his New York Times bestseller, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. (The tome, a parody of civics textbooks, owes a measure of its success to Wal-Mart, which banned the book for its naked illustrations of the Supreme Court justices, in turn pumping up sales.)

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The news spoof scored record ratings during last fall's presidential election (the Sept. 30 post-presidential debate episode attracted a series high 2.4 million viewers).

Stewart became a full-fledged pop-culture icon following an appearance on CNN's Crossfire where he told Tucker Carlson to "stop hurting America" and called him a "dick." More people downloaded the clip of the showdown than actually watched Crossfire, which CNN canceled a few months later.

http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater231.html


No word how much the production deal was worth. But Stewart's already doing pretty well for himself. Last March, he agreed to a four-year contract extension estimated at $1.5 million a year that will keep him anchoring The Daily Show through the 2008 presidential race.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=797&u=/eo/20050215/en_tv_eo/15936&printer=1

See also:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/16/155052/804


Related Thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1600175#1602074

One for the bookmarks. BTW, I've seen those naked photos of the Supreme Court Justices, and they're nothing to write home about! Or even look at a second time! Eew!:-(