Will There Be More Jon Stewart For All Of Us?

As everyone in the universe knows at this point, Stephen Colbert will be leaving Comedy Central and his show The Colbert Report at the end of this year to host The Late Show. So what is Comedy Central to do with the empty 30-minute void after The Daily Show every Monday through Thursday? I've come up with a few plausible and out-of-the-box options for the comedy network. But now I'm just focused on one thing: The future of The Daily Show and Jon Stewart. What will happen to the comedy giant after its equally successful brother show ends? Anything is possible at Comedy Central and one of these many options is to extend the series from being a half-hour comedy to a full hour.

Now you may be asking yourself: "How could that ever work?" Making the shift from half-hour to full hour is definitely a bold move considering how difficult it must be to fill a half hour every Monday through Thursday with absurd stories of the day. But there are many chances that this could actually be successful. Let's delve into the pros and cons of making this particular decision.

PRO: Jon Stewart Will Be Able To Cover More News

As John Oliver said in the premiere of his new HBO show Last Week Tonight, there's very little coverage going on at the moment about the biggest election in the world at the moment: The general elections in India. If Jon Stewart had a full hour to cover every news story of the day, he could easily touch up on more world news and just more news in general. There's a lot of crazy stuff that happens every single day, people. Jon just doesn't get enough of an opportunity to satirize them all.

CON: Having To Cover More News Because There's Just Too Much Time

On the other hand, much of the news generated every day is not of importance to most people. I mean, of course people cared about the downward spiral of Rob Ford or the banning of Donald Sterling after his racist comments, but do the majority of Americans actually want to know about the Daytime Emmy Awards? No. That's why we have CNN, so they can take the most mundane or very niche-y stories and talk about them for hours in the 24-hour news cycle sitting.

PRO: Introducing New Talent To The Show

Just as he helped launch the careers of Steve Carell, Colbert, and Oliver, Stewart has been bringing us ridiculously hilarious correspondents during his tenure on The Daily Show. Recently, Jon added another correspondent: SNL writer Michael Che. Maybe by getting a full hour every night, Jon could introduce even more ethnic and gender diversity into his onscreen entourage.

CON: Losing Viewers

People have a shorter attention span than ever before. It's true, people can barely watch a 10-second Snapchat let alone an hour-long comedy news program. I applaud you for making it so far down this story to be honest. It is very possible that if Jon and The Daily Show gang can't find a way to keep the interest level up throughout their longer episodes, viewership will drop and the hour-long experiment will end before it even gets a chance to evolve into something great. Perhaps the show could only air every other day and Comedy Central could replace the days without The Daily Show with new scripted content?

At the moment, it seems as though the decision is still not an easy one. But one this is for sure: As long as Jon Stewart and The Daily Show stay on television, half-hour or hour-long, it'll keep a lot of people happy.

Images: Tumblr/comedycentral; Tumblr/londonlark; Tumblr/clarence-odbody; Tumblr/sandandglass