THE NO SPIN ZONE
Littleford: When Jon took control of the whole show…it had
By day fourteen, the “real media” did not know what to do, and they
become very political on a national scale, and because of Jon’s voice,
would use our clips [because] we dealt in absurdity and were the only
correspondents were sent to do bits that were written for them, and Jon
ones who could make sense of it.
dictated what he wanted.
Unger: And before that, I’m not sure we could’ve filled the show with
Havlan: Jon’s early shows are like the other shows, but it wasn’t long
any more politics. We were proportional to what the media shows were
before it became more focused. He wasn’t afraid to say, “Let’s not call
filling at the time. It was mirroring the times, and the media landscape
it ‘Headlines’ anymore.” Other news segments also went away. But
changed. And once the three major networks started fighting for
Jon was very good at not [just] making changes for change’s sake, not
ratings…
making too many changes at once or forcing them overnight. He didn’t
say, “We’re never going to write another pop culture joke.” But he
Smithberg: …it was like fish in a barrel.
eventually wound up on the cover of TIME magazine.
DeCaro: It was like satirizing news in the beginning, but then it became
Winstead: Jon asked me to come back twice, but I felt like he wasn’t
the news. [More] people started getting their news from The Daily Show.
going to have any problem carrying the show forward. I wanted to be
able to create other franchises that were different from The Daily Show
Havlan: After the 2000 election, we realized that we could dig into the
but [still] used humor to speak truth to power.
Iraq War and didn’t have to be dependent on the content of the story, but
on how it was being covered. I knew our show was doing well when we
Smithberg: The moment The Daily Show became “The Daily Show”
was the 2000 election. We had a live election show from 9 to 11 [that
night], and at, like, 10:35, Florida flipped, and then we went into
thirty-six days of not having a president[-elect] and hanging chads.
54
FLOOD
won our first Emmy in 2001. I said, “I guess this is going to go on forever.”