Jon Stewart returned for his second Monday hosting Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and he spent the show’s opener defending comments he made … on his first show.

Stewart is back on Monday nights through the election to host the show he previously hosted from 1999 to 2015.

In his long-awaited, much-anticipated return last week, Stewart made comments that drew some backlash from the likes of Keith Olbermann and Mary Trump, among other liberals and anti-Trump types. They complained that Stewart was practicing both-sidesism, talking about the age of President Joe Biden as if he was suggesting Biden’s age made him just as unqualified to be president as Donald Trump and all his issues.

So Stewart opened his second show as if was bothered by the backlash. Spoiler alert: He was not.

Stewart said on the second show, “I’m just saying it’s better to deal head-on with what’s an apparent issue to people. But I guess as the famous saying goes, ‘democracy dies in discussion.’”

Stewart continued, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I have sinned against you. I’m sorry. It was never my intention to say out loud what I saw with my eyes and then brain. I can do better.”

Then Stewart showed what makes him so good at this.

“But I don’t even know where to start with that,” Stewart said. “Where do I go to study the particulars of unquestioning propaganda? I would need mentorship.”

At that moment, a clip of Tucker Carlson from Russia popped onto the screen.

Stewart then broke down (and took down) Carlson’s recent sycophantic interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I could go through the highlights of Stewart’s hilarious and dead-serious dismantling of Carlson and his views on Russia and Putin, but that would do Stewart a disservice. Watch the video for yourself.

Stewart’s opening numbers

Stewart’s debut last week was a ratings success. Deadline’s Lynette Rice writes the show “averaged more than 3 million total viewers across the night in Nielsen’s Live+3 numbers, which include simulcasts and the encore.”

That was a 129% jump from Trevor Noah’s last show in late 2022 — the last time “The Daily Show” had a permanent host. The simulcasts included other channels owned by Paramount: CMT, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop and TV Land.

On just Comedy Central, 930,000 watched Stewart’s debut, making it the most-watched “The Daily Show” on that network since 2018. That is until Monday’s show — Stewart’s second since his return — when 1.3 million tuned in.

And Stewart’s strong opening night had a halo effect, meaning it helped increase normal ratings for the next three days with Jordan Klepper as host. The shows on Feb. 13, 14 and 15 averaged 461,000 same-day viewers on Comedy Central. That’s quite the drop from Stewart’s show, but still the best numbers “The Daily Show” had seen since May 2021.

I’m going to give it a couple of more Mondays before diving into my thoughts (and the thoughts of others) on how Stewart is doing, and I might ask you, Poynter Report readers, to share your thoughts on Stewart’s return to “The Daily Show.”

Two shows in, and he is off to a promising start. But it’s still too early to make a proper assessment.

Oliver on YouTube: Be patient

In Tuesday’s newsletter, I mentioned how HBO’s John Oliver opened season 11 of “Last Week Tonight” by offering Clarence Thomas a million bucks a year for life (and a new RV) to step down from the Supreme Court. The show debuted Sunday night, but I couldn’t link to it as I normally would for Tuesday’s newsletter.

That’s because HBO is not immediately putting clips of Oliver’s show on YouTube as it has in the past. Oliver wrote about this on X, tweeting, “I know I usually share a link to our main story here on Mondays, but HBO has decided they’re going to wait until Thursday to post them to YouTube from now on. I hope they change their mind, but until then, you can see our piece about the Supreme Court on HBO, on MAX, and on YouTube in a few days.”

An HBO spokesperson told Cord Cutters News’ Roger Cheng that the delay in putting clips on YouTube is done to encourage more viewers to sign up for Max. The spokesperson said, “When ‘Last Week Tonight’ with John Oliver premiered on HBO, the convenience of watching on Max did not exist so YouTube allowed flexible viewing for the main story as well as promotional exposure. We are now delaying that availability and hope those fans choose to watch the entire show on Max.”

Gershkovich detention continues

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich appears in a Russian court in Moscow on Tuesday. (Moscow City Court via AP)

A Russian court on Tuesday upheld the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being held on trumped-up charges that he is a spy. The U.S. considers Gershkovich to be “wrongfully detained.”

Gershkovich’s lawyers appealed his detention, but Tuesday’s ruling means Gershkovich will continue to remain in jail until at least March 30. That would mean Gershkovich will have been detained for more than a year. (He was arrested on March 29, 2023.)

In a statement, The Wall Street Journal said, “Evan Gershkovich appeared in the Moscow City Court today, where an appeal of his wrongful detention was denied once again. It’s been nearly one year since Evan’s unjust arrest for doing nothing more than his job, and every day he remains in prison is an unconscionable attack on a free press. Evan is a journalist, and any suggestion or portrayal otherwise is fiction. We continue to demand his immediate release.”

In an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that Gershkovich could be released as part of a prisoner swap, but it’s not known how serious talks have been, if they’ve taken place at all.

New sports streaming venture sued

This didn’t take long. The recently announced sports streaming service formed by ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Isabella Simonetti, FuboTV has filed suit, alleging that the new sports service won’t let Fubo carry a small bundle of channels that the new venture plans to incorporate into its new service. Fubo serves customers in the United States, Canada and Spain and focuses primarily on channels that distribute live sports. It has more than 200 channels with 1.5 million subscribers in North America.

Earlier this month, ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to start a joint streaming platform that will make all of their sports programming available under one roof. It is expected to launch in the fall.

Simonetti reports shares in Fubo have “fallen about 20% since plans for the new sports-streaming service were announced.”

In addition, the suit alleges ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery are using “their power over commercially critical sports content to force Fubo to broadcast unwanted, expensive content that prevents Fubo from offering the sports-centric package of channels that its customers want.”

In other words, Fubo is alleging unfair “bundling,” meaning it will be forced to “carry dozens of expensive non-sports channels that Fubo’s customers do not want as a condition of licensing the Defendants’ sports channels.”

In a statement, FuboTV CEO David Gandler said, “Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice. By joining together to exclusively reserve the rights to distribute a specialized live sports package, we believe these corporations are erecting insurmountable barriers that will effectively block any new competitors from entering the market.”

Guthrie writes a book on faith

“Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, middle, talking about her new book on Tuesday’s show. (Courtesy: NBC News)

Savannah Guthrie, co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, has a new book out about faith called “Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere.”

The book is a series of essays and personal reflections. Guthrie is  Christian, but tells Today.com’s Shane Lou that the book is for anyone.

“You may be faith-full, you may be faith-curious, you may be faith-less, still scarred by a toxic religiosity of your past,” Guthrie said.

She added, “I’m not writing this book from some mountaintop where I’ve received some wisdom, and now I’m imparting it to the world. No, I’m still down here, struggling. Still down here, disappointing myself. I’m still down here, needing faith, needing grace, needing mercy, needing love. That’s why I wrote the book — because I’m the person that needs to read it. And so I thought, if I do, then maybe others do, too.”

New politics newsletters

Here are a couple of new politics-focused newsletters that might interest you.

The first one is actually a revamped newsletter. NBC News is relaunching its “First Read” newsletter, which was published for the final time last Friday. The new newsletter, called “From the Politics Desk,” will publish each weekday evening. Each issue will feature three sections: the news of the day, analysis from the author, and “must read” links from across the news environment. It will include contributions from a rotating group of NBC News personalities, including Kristen Welker, Chuck Todd and Steve Kornacki, as well as others on the NBC politics team.

The new newsletter debuted Tuesday, but let’s take a second to remember the old one.

The writers of “First Read” wrote last week, “Dating back to 2003, our newsletter/blog/dispatch/note has been around for more than 20 years, produced some daily 5,000 editions (!!!), covered four presidencies, six presidential elections, five midterm cycles — as well as war, the Great Recession, Supreme Court fights, impeachments, a pandemic, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and so much more. Our intention was always to make sense of the day’s political news, share the best of NBC News’ reporting and make you think about politics in a different way or with a different perspective. We often got it right. We sometimes got it wrong. But we always tried our best-faith effort to inform you about our political world — as crazy and as complicated as it can be. It was quite a run.”

The other new newsletter is from The Financial Times and is called “Election Countdown.” It will be delivered twice a week and FT says it will “serve as an essential guide to one of the most consequential presidential elections in decades.”

It will be led by FT’s Washington reporter Steff Chávez.

Smith’s reaction

If you were hoping for an apology from TNT NBA analyst Kenny Smith for his boneheaded comments over All-Star Weekend, you’re going to be disappointed.

During a special three-point shooting contest between the NBA’s Steph Curry and the WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu, Smith said Ionescu should have shot from the women’s three-point line, which is three feet shorter than the men’s.

Ionescu wanted to shoot from the men’s line and barely lost, 29-26. Her 26 points tied the winning score in the actual NBA All-Star three-point contest. Smith was panned all across social media for his dumb comments that made it seem like a woman couldn’t compete with a man unless she was given help. But he told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith that the whole matter was “much ado about nothing, honestly.”

Kenny Smith said he was actually sticking up for Ionescu and talked about “muscle memory” and how she is used to shooting and practicing from the women’s three-point line. He brushed the whole thing off by saying if you don’t play basketball, you don’t understand. He finished by saying, “My track record speaks for itself,” suggesting his comments weren’t misogynistic.

But basketball players — including the NBA’s Joel Embiid and former WNBA star Sue Bird — took exception to Smith’s original comments.

Kenny Smith could’ve simply told Stephen A. Smith, “Hey, I didn’t try to offend anyone, but obviously I did. I didn’t mean for it to come out like it did, and I’m sorry.”

Instead, he took the condescending approach of, “Ah, you people just don’t get it.”

That’s disappointing. I like Kenny Smith. But, to use a basketball term, he shot up an air ball on this one. And when he had a chance to shoot again, he threw up another one.

Media tidbits

• Smart conversation with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, director of MediaWise Alex Mahadevan and Poynter faculty member Tony Elkins: “How Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, could harm journalism and society.”
• The New York Times’ Elizabeth A. Harris with “A Celebrity Dies, and New Biographies Pop Up Overnight. The Author? A.I.”
• Raw Story’s Jordan Green with “Stalked by Nazis: How extremists tried to stop me from reporting on their violence.”
• Chris Caray has been named a play-by-play announcer for the Oakland A’s. He’s now the fourth-generation Caray to call Major League Baseball games. His dad is Chip Caray, who has called games for several teams, including his current job with the St. Louis Cardinals. His grandfather was longtime Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray. And his great-grandfather was the legendary Harry Caray, announcer for the Cardinals and Chicago Cubs and White Sox over his six-decade career.
• The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is taking heat for not including actor Matthew Perry during the “In Memoriam” segment of their awards ceremony on Sunday. Perry is best known for his role on the TV show “Friends,” but also appeared in movies, including “Fools Rush In” with Salma Hayek and “The Whole Nine Yards” with Bruce Willis. BAFTA announced Perry will be remembered during the television awards ceremony in May. Perry died last October from acute effects of the anesthetic ketamine, according to the results of an autopsy.
• Looks like “Madame Web” is a dud. Is it the movie itself? Do moviegoers have superhero fatigue? The Hollywood Reporter’s Pamela McClintock and James Hibberd with “Inside Sony’s ‘Madame Web’ Collapse: Forget About a New Franchise.”
• HBO’s fourth season of “True Detective” — this one called “Night Country” starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis — finished with an average audience of 12.7 million viewers for the six episodes, beating out the 11.9 million average for season one back in 2014. Season one starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and is widely considered the best season of the series. “Night Country” had so-so to slightly positive reviews, and I’d go along with that, giving it a lukewarm recommendation. The season was saved by a solid finale, by far the best episode of season four.

Hot type

• Speaking of Jodie Foster, The Atlantic’s Jordan Kisner with a good profile: “The loneliness of Jodie Foster.”
• Analysis from The Washington Post’s Andrew Van Dam: “In what month are you most likely to die?”
• If you like the reality-based show “Vanderpump Rules” like I do, you’ll enjoy this New York Times Magazine piece from Irina Aleksander: “How Tom Sandoval Became the Most Hated Man in America.”

More resources for journalists

• Delve more deeply into your editing skills with Poynter ACES Intermediate Certificate in Editing. Start anytime.
• Get the edge on reporting on the seven hot topics of the 2024 election with Beat Academy (webinar series) — Rolling enrollment from now through September. Enroll today.
• Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.