GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: The One Weird Trick Hollywood Doesn’t Want to Know About.

When The Daily Show became a runaway commercial and critical success twenty-five years ago it triggered Hollywood’s instinctive “monkey see-monkey do” response. Within a few years network, cable and later the streaming services, were immediately swamped with knock-offs of Stewart’s show. On the networks you got Colbert, Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Fallon doing Stewart’s same brand of Progressive politics married to clown-nose-on/clown-nose-off commentary masquerading as comedy. Even David Letterman spent his last few years on Network TV jettisoning the broad comedic sensibility had made him a late night staple in favor of an increasingly grating version of Stewart’s in-your-face progressive condescension. But even across the entire spectrum of free and paid TV you had a million other imitators who got their shot to do the same thing… from Samantha Bee and John Oliver to Bill Maher, Trevor Noah and now Jon Stewart again in a new incarnation on Apple TV. All of them trying to squeeze blood from an increasingly dry Progressive stone as they relentlessly carve up the same audience into smaller and smaller slices.

Now let’s compare how Hollywood responded to The Daily Show’s success to the very different reaction to the similar runaway success of Greg Gutfeld’s late night Fox News show. Perhaps you’ve heard that Gutfeld now has the most popular show in late night? Fox even bought a very expensive 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time to promote it. He is a ratings monster on paid cable, dwarfing what his progressive competitors are doing on free over-the-air network TV. And do you know how many networks, cable channels and streamers are looking to replicate Gutfeld’s success with conservative news, comedy and variety shows of their own?

Exactly zero.

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