Jon Stewart Extends Daily Show Stint

NEW YORK, October 19: Jon
Stewart has reached an agreement with Comedy Central to extend his contract as
the host of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart through 2010.

The news came on the heels
of the network announcing that it has launched a new website for the nightly
news parody show.

Stewart’s contract had
been set to expire at the end of 2008. In addition to hosting The Daily Show, Stewart also serves as an executive producer and
writer and is the principal behind Busboy Productions, with whom the network
has a first-look television agreement. The Emmy-nominated The Colbert Report was the first series produced under this umbrella
and the recently announced series Important Things with Demetri Martin is scheduled to premiere next summer.

Launched in the summer of
1996, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart takes a reality-based look at news, pop culture, politics and the
media. In each show, Stewart and a team of correspondents comment on the day's
stories, employing actual news footage, taped field pieces, in-studio guests
and on-the-spot coverage of important news events. The series airs Monday
through Thursday at 11 p.m. The Daily Show has received a record five consecutive Emmy Awards
and Stewart has been nominated for four Emmy Awards.

"Jon Stewart is an
extraordinary talent and Comedy Central is extremely fortunate that he will
continue to lead The Daily Show
team through 2010," said Michele Ganeless, the president of Comedy
Central. "Since joining the show in 1999, Jon has transformed The Daily
Show into the most consistently
funny, thought-provoking and potent political satire of our time and we are
thrilled to extend our partnership with Jon and his company, Busboy
Productions."

Additionally, Comedy
Central has announced that it has launched thedailyshow.com, a new web portal
for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The site features video clips from every episode dating back to 1999, the year
Jon Stewart took over the reins of The Daily Show, and will be expanded to include the show's entire
video history, totaling well over 13,000 high-quality clips. Visitors to
thedailyshow.com can also watch video clips from the previous night's show, the
week's best moments and videos spanning the full Jon Stewart
era—including guest interviews, correspondent segments and a myriad of
other highlights, including many clips never seen since their original airing.
The site will also extend the users' experience with episode synopses, profile
pages for past and present correspondent, embeddable video, games, downloads,
mobile content and merchandise.

In addition,
thedailyshow.com will feature one-click bookmarking and link-sharing with sites
such as Facebook, digg.com, del.icio.us and Fark.com, as well as extensive
tagging, themed playlists, specialized search tools and video-sharing
capabilities. Other site features include "The Wayback Randomizer,"
which will randomly pick a clip from any show 1999 to present with a click of a
button; and "The Daily Show in the News," featuring press coverage
that relates to the show in other media. The launch of thedailyshow.com is
sponsored by AT&T, Hyundai and TiVo.

Upcoming thedailyshow.com
features will include detachable video playback, which will allow the user to
both view a video clip and to continue browsing the site; a wiki that will
empower fans to enhance the information on the site; user-generated playlists;
and a public forum.

"There continues to
be a rabid appetite for Comedy Central programming online," said Erik
Flannigan, the executive VP of digital media at Comedy Central. "With
thedailyshow.com, we have created an online destination that raises the bar by
providing an exhaustive video library for everything Daily Show. This site exemplifies MTV Networks' strategy of
creating in-depth, engaging vertical sites for our vast library of quality
programming."

—By Irene Lew