Jon Stewart’s farewell from The Daily Show earned 3.5 million viewers, Comedy Central said Friday. This is more than double the regular audience for the satirical news television show.
According to Reuters, this is still below the show’s record 3.6 million person viewership which was set in October 2008 by the then Senator Barack Obama. Comedy Central, however said that the show had been streamed online an additional one million times and there were 233,400 tweets about the show Thursday night.
Rock singer Bruce Springsteen and comedians Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell were among the special guests who sent Stewart off after his 16 years of hosting the show. Stewart was also sent off by a video featuring some of his “frenemies,” including Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and Republican Senator John McCain.
Stewart has not yet announced his future plans but signed off Thursday night telling fans he was “merely taking a small pause in the conversation. Rather that saying goodbye, or goodnight, I’m just going to say I’m gonna go get a drink.”
South African comedian Trevor Noah, who joined the show as a contributor in late 2014, will take over as host of The Daily Show in late September.
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