Another study into viewers of The Daily Show … and no matter how they try to spin, we’re still smart people 🙂
Some highlights:
“A journalism think tank studying “The Daily Show” doesn’t believe many people get their news from Jon Stewart — because otherwise they wouldn’t get the jokes.”
“They’re not making jokes that you could get if you live in the country but don’t read the news … . You can’t get the jokes if you’re not watching the news. The jokes are designed to make you think more about the news.”
Basically, their point is that in order to find The Daily Show funny, you have to be media and news savvy already. If you don’t follow news in a regular sense, you won’t get jokes on The Daily Show, so they figure it kind of dispels the myth that young people only watch The Daily Show for news.
But I do figure that the other news Daily Show viewers follow will invariably be online — they’re certainly not watching other TV news!
Out of context of course, a statement in the article like this — “The Project for Excellence in Journalism also said it was surprised at how much the Comedy Central late-night program resembles “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hardball” and other cable news shows in content.” — would appear to be disparaging, but I think they’re taking the traditional view of cable news … that it has a point.
But once again, what this proves again is that people who watch The Daily Show are smart 🙂