#JonVoyage, indeed: Jon Stewart’s final “Daily Show” episode scored 3.5 million total viewers — the second most in the show’s history — on Thursday.
In the key 18-49 demographic, Stewart brought in 1.8 million audience members, according to Nielsen’s Live + Same Day rating.
An Oct. 29, 2008 episode — which featured Barack Obama as guest — attracted 3.6 million total viewers. That total remained a show record by the skin of its teeth after Thursday evening.
In December, the final episode of “The Colbert Report” netted 2.5 million total viewers in its old 11:30 p.m. time slot, which now belongs to Larry Wilmore’s “The Nightly Show.”
Stewart’s final farewell was also more-watched than the final episodes of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” (Feb. 20, 2009), “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” (Dec. 19, 2014) and “Chelsea Lately” (Aug. 26, 2014) among both total viewers and adults 18-49.
Comedy Central stated that the final Stewart show landed an additional 1 million full-episode streams across the Comedy Central App, thedailyshow.com and Hulu.
On Twitter, Stewart’s last lap saw 117,000 people write 233,400 tweets; 4.3 million people saw them a total of 26.4 million times — it was the most-social episode in franchise history.
Thursday’s epic send-off ran about 50 minutes and featured the return of many of Stewart’s old friends, nemeses and proteges.
The last “Daily Show With Jon Stewart” occupied the comedian’s usual 11 p.m. timeslot — and then some. With no “Nightly Show” after, Comedy Central had no problem letting Stewart run as long as he wanted to.
South African comedian Trevor Noah officially takes over as “Daily Show” host on Sept. 28.
Along with Noah and Wilmore, Samantha Bee, Lewis Black, Steve Carell, Vance DeGeneres, Mo Rocca, Matt Walsh, Michael Che, Craig Kilborn, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band helped say goodbye to the Stewart era.
Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie, Chuck Schumer, Charlie Rangel, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Rahm Emanuel, Wolf Blitzer, Lindsey Graham, John Kerry and Bill O’Reilly also joined in, among others.