Will Australia Ever Have A News Comedy Program As Beloved And Important As ‘The Daily Show’?

For nineteen years, The Daily Show has been an institution of American television. Starting at a time when late night television meant hosts giving monologues about the news of the day and talking to celebrities from across their desks, The Daily Show has managed to do the impossible – make a show about politics and hard news, and turn it into a commercially successful, universally beloved program with a proven influence on its viewers. Jon Stewart has seen his audience through America’s highs and lows. He takes current events and topics of debate and national tragedies and makes people listen – he is where people turn for complex political discussions to be made accessible, without being oversimplified or biased.

The kind of dialogue that satirical news shows like this have created in the US is incredibly valuable, so it’s long been asked – where is Australia’s Daily Show? Not that we are lacking in truly talented people creating some inspired political satire – but where is our equivalent of a show with the ratings, viewership, cult following and funding that Jon Stewart gets?

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The value of a late night satirical news show

Every major network in the US has its own version of a late night talk show. The Tonight Show and Late Night have been at the heart of NBC’s programming for decades, competing against The Late Show and Late Late Show over on CBS. Jimmy Kimmel heads late night programming on ABC, possibly learning a lesson to name your show after yourself from Conan O’Brien, whose self-titled show has been airing on TBS since being unjustly booted from NBC many moons ago. It’s an extremely lucrative business for network executives in terms of advertising, and in exchange for bringing in viewers, your average late night host earns around $10 million a year. But while Jimmy Fallon makes around $11 million for bringing an audience of 4.3 million to The Tonight Show each week, Jon Stewart, who typically gets half a million viewers a week, reportedly earns somewhere between 25 and $30 million. There’s something special about The Daily Show.

That’s because when we say The Daily Show and others like it are valuable, we’re not just talking about money. Studies show that Daily Show viewers are more informed than people who watch Fox News; Jon Stewart has been named the most influential man in a poll in which President Obama came in at number 21; and Stewart is considered by viewers to be more trustworthy than major commercial news outlets. And there are really not that many things these days that get a rating of 8.9 on IMDb.

And the shows it has inspired have had similar effects. There’s Stephen Colbert’s political pundit character on The Colbert Report who did a better job at informing people about campaign finance issues with his super PAC ‘Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow’ than the news shows he was parodying, and won a freaking Peabody for his efforts. There’s John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, tackling long form, meticulously researched stories on issues that others might be wary to cover. After a segment on net neutrality last year, John Oliver called upon his viewers to flood the Federal Communications Commission’s feedback sit with comments, causing it to crash – he informed his audience about an issue they wouldn’t have otherwise known or cared about, and convinced them to do something about it. Let’s not forget his way of explaining the extent of the NSA’s surveillance capabilities by asking Edward Snowden about dick pics.

The people watching these shows learn more about the issues they joke about than from real news sources. So what’s the value of political satire? As Mark Humphries, host of satirical news show The Roast, puts it, there’s one obvious benefit: “It dulls the pain.”

“These sorts of programs do enable people to engage with politics who normally wouldn’t pay any attention,” says Humphries. “Something I didn’t realise until The Roast ended was that a lot of people were only getting their news from us. I was slightly alarmed by this, but if the news can be presented in a way that attracts an audience who wouldn’t normally tune in, then I think these sorts of program do have some value. Ultimately, only good things can come from more people engaging with and understanding politics in Australia.”

Satirising politics, policy debate and the news telling us about them makes people who don’t engage with other news sources pay attention. To make the best joke possible, you have to set up the information in the clearest, simplest way – meaning that because these shows are making jokes, they’re forced to educate their audiences to make sure they understand what’s funny. That’s useful in any democracy, Australia included.

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So what’s happening in Australia?

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of excellent, smart, funny people, doing excellent, smart and funny things. Shaun Micallef is a tremendously funny human being, and his show Mad as Hell is great. The Roast continue to nail it in their new partnership with the Guardian. For years The Chaser was an amazing source of political and media commentary in between all the pranks and singing.

But none of them have become a beloved voice of reason, so nationally renowned that good political candidates go on it and scared political candidates avoid it. None of them have taken off in the way that The Daily Show, for a few reasons. One is cost. “To make a half-hour scripted comedy on a daily basis requires a big team,” Humphries says. “The question also becomes: who would fund it? The obvious choice is the ABC but they’re not exactly overflowing with cash at the moment. And you’re unlikely to see the commercial networks take a risk on something like this any time soon, although I hope they prove me wrong.”

The other big issue is lack of material. America has about fifteen times as many people living in it, and assuming a similar ratio of prominent idiot/politician to regular person, there’s just so much more for Jon Stewart to talk about. “From my experience of working on a ten minute daily show, I can say you’d be hard pressed to squeeze much more out on a daily basis, unless you’re content filling with silly irrelevant stories,” Humphries says.

“Part of what makes The Daily Show work is that there’s a steady stream of ridiculousness being provided by Fox News. We don’t really have anything like that here. Sure, there’s The Bolt Report, but that’s barely one hour a week and doesn’t really have the influence of Fox News, so there’s only so much you can do tearing shreds off that.”

Not to say that what’s happening in Australia doesn’t make for great satire – The Daily Show won Emmy awards for their coverage of Australia’s gun control policy. On a recent episode of The Bugle, John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman’s satirical “audio newspaper”/podcast, Oliver referred to our dear PM as a “car crash of a human being.” Our stories are making news for international shows, so they must be pretty good.

But unfortunately for comedy lovers, Australia has done too great a job at dealing with issues that Americans are still fighting over. “Some of the issues which come up time and time again in the US are almost non-existent here,” says Humphries. “Debates about universal health care and gun control were more or less concluded years ago, whereas they’re still contentious issues in the States.” And while our politicians do enjoy lashing out at each other once in a while, we don’t have that same division between red and blue states that the US faces.

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Is an Australian Daily Show possible?

What circumstances would need to exist for an Australian Daily Show-esque program to thrive? The right host, for starters – as Humphries rightly points out, “Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver are a rare breed.” They would need to be the right combination of smart, funny, and likeable. (Basically Shaun Micallef. It would be Shaun Micallef.)

But it also needs the right people making it. “To get on air it takes a network executive who wants to make it happen. As for what it needs to be successful, it would need a killer team of researchers, writers and presenters who have that perfect fit of likeability, intelligence and ability to make dull topics sound interesting.” Even Comedy Central, the people paying for The Daily Show, rely on prime time programming for the bulk of their profits. It would take sacrifice by a network prepared to maybe not make all the money in exchange for quality programming, and prepared to not worry too much about offending some powerful people.

Ultimately, it comes down to this – we may ask where our Daily Show is, and yes, it would be an invaluable thing – but it’s not a necessity.  It would be really nice though. In the meantime, watch Mad as Hell and The Roast and the new one on ABC called The Weekly, and grow up to be a billionaire with their own TV channel who can make it happen.

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Maddie is a former intern at Junkee. She’d be pleased to tweet you at @itsmaddiejames.