Can Jon Stewart give Apple TV + the first big hit talk show in the streaming age?

Mr. Stewart, a pioneer of satire masquerading as the news, returns to a media landscape very different from the one he often spit in his 16 years hosting “The Daily Show”. The comedy got trickier with an American audience that grew more angry and divided during Mr. Stewart’s absence.

Now he’s trying to get back to a show that offers fewer jokes and a more serious program. With his new bi-weekly series, “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” his first challenge is to get people to notice him. Apple TV + is decidedly more affluent but less rooted than basic cable. Comedy Central, Mr. Stewart’s former home, still has the benefit of an integrated audience for “The Daily Show,” hosted by Mr. Stewart’s successor, Trevor Noah.

Starting this week, episodes of “The Problem With Jon Stewart” will appear on Apple TV + every alternate Thursday around midnight, not as a nod to late-night tradition, but because it’s the moment when streamers typically drop new content.

Streaming TV companies have been successful in recruiting other talk TV giants in the second or third act of their careers, including Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman, who publish long-running interviews at regular intervals on Apple TV + and Netflix.,

respectively. NBCUniversal bet on younger talent with “The Amber Ruffin Show,” recently renewing it for a second season on its streaming site, Peacock.

Despite the streamers’ takeover of most TV genres, from high-profile dramas to trashy reality shows, they haven’t fully deciphered the format of the news talk and comedy that late-night shows have. and cable shows have always owned. Netflix has done its best in recent years, with a series of shows hosted by comedians including Chelsea Handler, Joel McHale, Michelle Wolf and the late Norm Macdonald. None lasted long.

One obstacle: the way users have been trained to think about the usefulness of streaming services, namely viewing on demand, anytime and in binge-mode. For topical content, even the comedy genre, audiences tend to seek other sources, says Geoffrey Baym, professor of media studies at Temple University. At the height of Mr. Stewart’s “Daily Show”, Mr. Baym published a dozen academic articles on related topics and wrote a book called “From Cronkite to Colbert”.

“Audience habits with streaming aren’t really built around the calendar and the clock,” he says. “But satire, just by definition, is news. It’s very hard to satire something that happened weeks, months, or years ago, so you can’t satirize streaming headlines like you would on night time TV.

One of Netflix’s most successful efforts was “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj,” which spanned six seasons. Each episode featured a deep dive into topics such as fentanyl and obesity around the world by the host, a former correspondent for the “Daily Show”.

“Almost everyone who does this stuff comes from final school Jon Stewart,” says Doug Herzog, former president of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, which helped launch “The Daily Show” in 1996 (with host Craig Kilborn) and oversaw him throughout the transition to Mr. Noah. “To a certain extent, Jon invented the genre, which probably makes it all the more imperative for him to really take a different direction.”

Fans will find aspects of “The Problem With Jon Stewart” familiar. In front of an audience, he sits at a table for an opening monologue (now wearing a T-shirt and jacket instead of a suit and tie). He twirls his pen, stops to stare at the camera, stifles the laughter behind his fist, and yells in self-mockery like, “I’m what’s left of Jon Stewart.”

Breaking away from its previous format, the show includes unscripted segments in the show’s writers room, where Mr. Stewart and his team joke about the topic of each episode (developed in a weekly accompanying podcast). A separate round table captures the show’s understated tone.

The show echoes the ultra-rational argument style of Mr. Stewart, once viewed by many of his fans as unifying and his critics as condescending. “It was all: Can we talk sensibly? Can we adopt moderation? Can we work together to discuss our common problems? Mr. Baym said. “And unfortunately, that idea seems quite strange in our present moment.”

Mr. Stewart won’t face his peers, from NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel to Bill Maher on HBO and Greg Gutfeld on Fox News (which regularly draws more viewers than his broadcast rivals). The slot competition and Nielsen overnight ratings do not apply to streaming shows. Where Mr. Stewart will have to prove himself again is in the battle for attention and afterthought discussion, which can be measured by the demand for clips posted online.

In this arena, his previous show still dominates. In the past week, ‘The Daily Show’ politically-themed videos generated 585 million views on Facebook,

YouTube and Twitter this year, according to video measurement platform Tubular Labs. During this period, which generated material on the January 6 insurgency and other contentious events, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” came in second with 359 million views for its political clips, followed by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (330 million).

Mr. Stewart is in the game. His videos, including old footage and promos for his new show, have racked up 57 million views this year. It was more than the politically-themed highlights of the shows of one of his former proteges (“Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”, 24 million), but less than another (“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”, 98 million).

Write to John Jurgensen at [email protected]