The Pew Research Center suggested in 2010 that 74% of regular viewers were between 18 and 49, and that 10% of the audience watched the show for its news headlines, 2% for in-depth reporting, and 43% for entertainment; compared with respectively 64%, 10% and 4%, who said the same of CNN.

Some correspondent segments involve the show's members travelling to different locations to file comedic reports on current news stories and conduct interviews with people related to the featured issue.

While correspondents stated to be reporting abroad are usually performing in-studio in front of a greenscreen background, on rare occasions, cast members have recorded pieces on location.

[citation needed] However its rise in popularity, particularly following the show's coverage of the 2000 and 2004 elections, made Stewart according to a Rolling Stone (2006) article, "the hot destination for anyone who wants to sell books or seem hip, from presidential candidates to military dictators".

After a stretch of episodes filmed from Trevor Noah's apartment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show returned to a smaller studio at One Astor Plaza, the corporate headquarters of ViacomCBS in Times Square.

[57] Aiming to parody conventional newscasts, it featured a comedic monologue of the day's headlines from anchor Craig Kilborn (a well-known co-anchor of ESPN's SportsCenter), as well as mockumentary style on-location reports, in-studio segments and debates from regular correspondents Winstead, Brian Unger, Beth Littleford, and A. Whitney Brown.

[59] Common segments included "This Day in Hasselhoff History" and "Last Weekend's Top-Grossing Films, Converted into Lira", in parody of entertainment news shows and their tendency to lead out to commercials with trivia such as celebrity birthdays.

[63] Each episode concluded with a segment called "Your Moment of Zen" that showed random video clips of humorous and sometimes morbid interest such as visitors at a Chinese zoo feeding baby chickens to the alligators.

[78] In taking over hosting from Kilborn, Stewart initially retained much of the same staff and on-air talent, allowing many pieces to transition without much trouble, while other features like "God Stuff", with John Bloom presenting an assortment of actual clips from various televangelists, and "Backfire", an in-studio debate between Brian Unger and A. Whitney Brown, evolved into the similar pieces of "This Week in God" and Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell's "Even Stevphen".

The ending segment "Your Moment of Zen", previously consisting of a random selection of humorous videos, was diversified to sometimes include recaps or extended versions of news clips shown earlier in the show.

Their experience in writing for the satirical newspaper, which uses fake stories to mock real print journalism and current events, would influence the comedic direction of the show; Stewart recalls the hiring of Karlin as the point at which things "[started] to take shape".

Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, recalled of this period, "When all the news guys were walking on eggshells, Jon was hammering those questions about WMDs.

However, as the focus of the show has become more news-driven, correspondents have increasingly been used in studio pieces, either as experts discussing issues at the anchor desk or as field journalists reporting from false locations in front of a green screen.

He acknowledged that the show is not necessarily an "equal opportunity offender", explaining that Republicans tended to provide more comedic fodder because "I think we consider those with power and influence targets and those without it, not.

[107] In an effort to fill time while keeping to the strike-related restrictions, the show aired or re-aired some previously recorded segments, and Stewart engaged in a briefly recurring mock feud with fellow late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Conan O'Brien.

Noah also increased the usage of more millennial-based references, impersonations and characterizations for his comedy on the show, due to his younger demographic and his ability to speak in multiple accents and eight languages.

On November 16, 2017, Stewart once again returned to The Daily Show, in part as a parody of the robocalls of fake Washington Post reporter "Bernie Bernstein" and to promote Night of Too Many Stars on HBO.

[145] In July 2020, Comedy Central head Chris McCarthy told Vulture that there were plans to possibly extend the show to an hour-long format by the end of the year.

[180] Wyatt Cenac had a tumultuous tenure on the show, revealing in a July 2015 interview on WTF with Marc Maron, that his departure stemmed in part from a heated argument he had with Jon Stewart in June 2011 over a bit about Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the show received more male viewers in the 18- to 34-year-old age demographic than Nightline, Meet the Press, Hannity & Colmes and all of the evening news broadcasts.

Stewart argues that Americans are living in an "age of information osmosis" in which it is close to impossible to gain one's news from any single source, and says that his show succeeds comedically because the viewers already have some knowledge about current events.

The study contended that, since both programs are more focused on the nature of "infotainment" and ratings than on the dissemination of information, both are broadly equal in terms of the amount of substantial news coverage they offer.

Tucker Carlson and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead have chastised Stewart for criticizing politicians and newspeople in his solo segments and then, in interviews with the same people, rarely taking them to task face-to-face.

"[201] A 2004 study into the effect of The Daily Show on viewers' attitudes found that participants had a more negative opinion of both President Bush and then Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

While disillusionment and negative perceptions of the presidential candidates could discourage watchers from voting, Baumgartner and Morris say it is also possible that discontent could prompt greater involvement and that by following the show, viewers may potentially become more engaged and informed voters, with a broader political knowledge.

Larris argues that the study measured cynicism in overly broad terms, and that it would be extremely hard to find a causal link between viewing The Daily Show and thinking or acting in a particular way.

[207] Bloggers such as Marty Kaplan of The Huffington Post argue that so long as Stewart's comedy is grounded in truth, responsibility for increased cynicism belongs to the political and media figures themselves, not the comedian who satirizes them.

More4 was the first international broadcaster to syndicate entire Daily Show episodes, though they made edits to the program due to content, language, length or commercial references.

The Global Edition of the week of July 20, 2011, was not aired in the UK as it included a segment mocking Rupert Murdoch's appearance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee in relation to the News International phone hacking scandal.

In February 2018, The Daily Show: Ears Edition podcast was launched as companion piece to the main program, often featuring extended information and additional interviews.