Jon Stewart comments on the problem with Apple.
After his news show “The Problem with Jon Stewart” was canceled in October after two seasons, the Emmy winner said he “knew we were in trouble.”
“They didn’t censor me, that wasn’t free speech,” Stewart said on The city Podcast. “When you work for a company, that’s part of the deal, even at Comedy Central. The deal is I can do whatever I want until it hurts their beer sales or whatever they want to sell. And that’s the deal we all make.”
He recalled an interview with economist Larry Summers, who asked him if he thought “Apple was somehow profiteering or doing something wrong.” Stewart immediately responded with a “Yes, of course!”
“We play the interview for the audience, they explode like we just hit a three-pointer at the final siren,” Stewart said in the podcast. “The show ends, we go in full Rudy mode. The Apple executives came into the locker room afterwards with a look on their faces and I just thought, ‘Oh my God, did the factory explode, what happened?'”
Apple
Stewart added: “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, our goals don’t match up in any way.’ We’re trying to execute our intent as best and as sensitively as we can, but they have a different agenda. And that’s when I knew we were in trouble.”
The comedian bears no grudge against Apple and explains: “There is a mantra we all need to keep in mind: corporations are cowards.”
“That’s what they’re doing now and that’s what they’ve always done. They don’t want to cause problems,” Stewart continued. “I worked at Comedy Central, their lawyers were constantly under threat of an advertising boycott. The Comedy Central brand was a provocation to some extent. And that was mostly positive for them. Most content companies don’t want that smoke.”
In October, The New York Times reported that Apple canceled the comedy show before its third season due to creative differences and executive concerns about Stewart’s coverage of topics such as China and artificial intelligence.
Jon Stewart, winner of the Outstanding Variety Talk Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series awards for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the press room of the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles. (Elizabeth Goodenough / Everett Collection)
Stewart has now temporarily returned to his previous post. The daily showwhere he hosted Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan in April after Apple allegedly “asked” us not to let her appear The problem‘s accompanying podcast.
“They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her,'” he told Khan a month after the U.S. Justice Department and more than a dozen state attorneys general sued Apple, claiming the tech giant has an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market that could spread to the entertainment industry and other parts of the economy.
The problem with Jon Stewartwhich received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing of a Nonfiction Program in 2022, is available to stream on Apple TV+.
The daily show airs weekdays at 11/10c on Comedy Central, with Stewart on Mondays.