Jon Stewart isn’t one to stay silent on the major issues of the day, even when a few tech giants wish he would. Before returning as Monday night host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” the comedian and activist held a brief tenure on Apple TV+ with his political talk show “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” a platform that skewed more aggressive than his former (and now current) gig. This eventually earned the ire of the studio’s parent company, Apple, which cancelled the show when Stewart refused to agree to censor conversations around artificial intelligence, Israel, and China. He’s also spoken in the past about how certain news networks will keep their anchors from being interviewed by him.
As reported on by Deadline, speaking in an upcoming interview on the podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” Stewart went further in his assessment of tech’s toxic influence on entertainment and how, in changing it from an analog to a digital business, these companies are keeping creatives and artists from being treated with dignity and respect.
“That’s the schism, the earthquake that’s been going through it. I can’t function like that,” Stewart said. He added later, “These companies don’t believe in institutional knowledge that allows people to grow and get better and create more. What they believe now is the auteur system, which has always sort of existed within film and TV… and this idea of ruthlessly efficient content factories, where what matters is the real estate and not the individual creative.”
Per Deadline’s report, Stewart spoke with O’Brien about how there was a “legacy business” that was “eccentric” and often “inefficient,” but also provided many opportunities for many people. Then Silicon Valley took over and started cutting back in ways that were detrimental to individuals and the process of making entertainment and creating conversations.
“So, now Apple and Amazon, they go in and they go, ‘Writers’ room? Wait, you’ve got 14 writers and they’re with you from start to finish on the production?’” said Stewart. “‘Well, it’s important for the writers to be invested and also we’re showing them how they’re on the page because it’s different about the page to the screen. They’ve got to understand how that works and understand how we interact with the props’. And they’re like, ‘They can have three weeks and it’s gotta be on Zoom. And you can have four of them’.”
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