Jon Stewart Says Apple & Amazon Have Caused An “Earthquake” Within Entertainment Business

EXCLUSIVE: Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show has breathed new life into the Comedy Central talk show and won an Emmy for its efforts.

But just over a year ago, Stewart was about to have his previous show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, canceled by Apple TV+ over creative differences or “different agendas”.

Now, in conversation with Conan O’Brien on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, Stewart lamented how tech giants such as Apple and Amazon have radically changed the entertainment business.

“There was this legacy business, and you’re seeing it change now as Silicon Valley comes in,” he said. “The ethos of legacy entertainment is we’ve created this incredibly eccentric business where you need an agent and a manager and a lawyer, and they’re gonna take about 60% of what you make, but without them, there’s nothing you can do. And you join the studio, and the studio will give you a deal and you’ll sit in your room. It’s the most inefficient way. Silicon Valley walked in, in the way that Elon Musk walked into Twitter and went, ‘How many people work here? 10,000? Make it two’.”

He added, “So, now Apple and Amazon, they go in and they go, ‘Writer’s room? Wait, you’ve got 14 writers and they’re with you from start to finish on the production?’ ‘Well, it’s important for the writers to be invested and also we’re showing them how they’re on the page because it’s different about the page to the screen. They’ve got to understand how that works and understand how we interact with the props’. And they’re like, ‘They can have three weeks and it’s gotta be on Zoom. And you can have four of them’.”

Stewart added that these companies are “changing the ethos” and changing entertainment from an analog to a digital business. “That’s the schism, the earthquake that’s been going through it. I can’t function like that.” he added.

O’Brien agreed that the changes have meant that many of his comedy writer friends are having trouble getting work now and that it’s “changing radically”.

“These companies don’t believe in institutional knowledge that allows people to grow and get better and create more. What they believe now is the auteur system, which has always sort of existed within film and TV… and this idea of ruthlessly efficient content factories, where what matters is the real estate and not the individual creative,” Stewart added.

It’s not the first time that Stewart has talked about Apple since he left. In May, he revealed that the iPhone maker wouldn’t let him have Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on his show’s podcast spinoff.

In June, he said that his aims didn’t “align” with those of Apple, which is believed to have had issues with The Problem with Jon Stewart covering issues such as AI and China. “There’s a mantra we all have to remember: Corporations are pussies,” he added.

Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend is produced by O’Brien’s Team Coco, which is backed by SiriusXM as part of a $150M deal struck in 2022. It debuted in 2018 and has produced over 200 episodes.