This past November we
posted a rumor, courtesy of our friends at The Digital Bits, that
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart would arrive on DVD on May 14th. It was said to be a "Season 1" release. That brought some of our readers up short, though, because of two points: first, they pointed out that this is a *daily* show, and that including an entire seasons' run would be a *lot* of discs. Two, they mentioned that the first season of
The Daily Show was hosted by Craig Kilborn, who ran it for several years until Jon Stewart took over.
Well, we did know all that, of course. We were just passing on the rumor as it was stated. On behalf of our readers, though, we've been looking for answers to their concerns since then. However, all we've gotten is speculation. The speculation is that this will be a "best of" collection, featuring the funniest stuff from Jon Stewart's first year with the show. The best comparison is to point to NBC's
The Tonight Show: when that show's title comes up, Carson and Leno are the host names that spring to mind. However, Jack Parr and Steve Allen hosted incarnations of the show first, just as Kilborn originally hosted
The Daily Show. But Comedy Central's Emmy- and Peabody-winning series has reached its greatest level of popularity since Jon Stewart took over the desk in 1999, and is still running the show. it's probable that the studio wants to promote the DVDs from that angle, and so they're going with Stewart's first year on the initial DVDs.
Now we have new information from industry sources about this release. No, not about the content. About the release date! The "May 14th" date that The Bits passed along last year is now changed, we're told. We have it on good authority that the new date for this release is
July 5th, and that distributor Paramount will announce the details of this release within the next 60-90 days. Stay tuned, and we'll update you just as soon as we can!
