Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on Crossfire

On October 15, 2004, American comedian Jon Stewart appeared on CNN's Crossfire, hosted by media commentators Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.

Three months after the appearance, Crossfire was cancelled and Carlson was fired;[a] commentators differ as to how impactful it actually was, but generally agree that Stewart was at least part of the reason.

Stewart found success from the incident: observers – including the president of CNN, critics in the press, and liberals on the internet – largely agreed with his points, significantly raising his status and profile in the American political sphere.

Daily Show executive producer Steve Bodow later told The New York Times that the actual events of the segment were unplanned.

[2] Stewart had caustic words for the show, portraying it as a place where partisan hacks took nuanced issues and turned them into two-sided exchanges of talking points.

[6] The segment quickly entered broad circulation – that episode of Crossfire beat the previous month's average viewership by over 250,000, for a total of 867,000 on-air watchers.

In addition, transcripts and clips of the episode were spread widely over the internet,[7] which Michael Schaffer of Politico notes predated the rise of later social media giants such as YouTube.

[4] Writing for NPR in 2006, Paul Boutin counted the segment as one of the viral clips which helped YouTube gain popularity in its first year.

[4] On January 5, 2005, CNN President Jon Klein announced that the network had cut ties with Tucker Carlson[a] and would be cancelling Crossfire.

Klein explicitly cited Stewart's on-air criticism of Crossfire as a factor in the network's decision, commenting, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon's overall premise".