Jon Stewart Joins the HBO Team

Jon Stewart’s next gig has finally been revealed. He has joined HBO in a four-year deal production deal. Stewart left Comedy Central’s The Daily Show back in August, and his next gig had since been a mystery.

“Appearing on television 22 minutes a night clearly broke me,” Stewart said in the announcement. “I’m pretty sure I can produce a few minutes of content every now and again.”

If you were expecting a new, uncensored version of The Daily Show on HBO, you’re going to be disappointed. The new deal doesn’t have anything to do with a new show. The specifics of the deal are still somewhat vague, but we do know that Stewart will now be producing short digital content for HBO Go, HBO Now and other online HBO properties.

HBO has no shortage of opinionated political comedians. Bill Maher has been with HBO for several years, while former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver is in his second season of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. All three political comedy content producers fill different roles. Oliver focuses on topics that are usually ignored by American media, Bill Maher has a talk show with panelist that discuss current events. It looks like Stewarts deal is going to be completely different. HBO doesn’t have any big name content producers for their digital space, so it will be interesting to see just exactly what that entails.

HBO is certainly preparing a substantial set of digital offerings. Bill Simmons was hired earlier this summer for a new sports-related show that will begin next year, but Simmons has already started his podcast under the HBO umbrella. We’re not sure when Stewarts new digital content will be a reality, but I’d predict sometime in 2016.

We’ll be waiting on more info to see what this new deal means for both parties and what content we can expect on HBO properties.