Part of the surprise, publishers said, is that the Comedy Central audience is more serious than its reputation allows. The public may still think of the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” audience as a group of sardonic slackers, Gen-Y college students who prefer YouTube to print. But publishers say it’s a much more diverse demographic — and more important, a book-buying audience.What goes unsaid in the article is, I think, the more important context. We are at a place in our culture where the traditional news outlets have been so devalued that Stewart isn't just the home of fake news with more content than the real news, it's now one of the only places on TV where you can get a dose of serious thought.
“It’s the television equivalent of NPR,” Ms. Levin, of Free Press, said. “You have a very savvy, interested audience who are book buyers, people who do go into bookstores, people who are actually interested in books.”
The evolution of the narrative on this has been fascinating. We've gone from "isn't it a problem that kids get their news from fake news like Stewart," (the drumbeat of which finally quieted after that study came out showing that there was as much news content in Stewart's shows than the news, and his viewers had a better grasp on the issues,) to "if you want to talk about serious stuff, you have to do the comedy show."
And just like Bill O'Reilly bloviating about Stewart's audience not being serious people, FOX News proves once again that they really don't understand what's going on in the culture, well, at all:
“The 1/2 Hour News Hour” on Fox, the conservative answer to the Comedy Central shows, had its premiere with 1.5 million viewers last Sunday but does not plan to do author interviews, a Fox spokeswoman said.
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