comedy central

Jon Stewart’s biting satire may have made his new bosses squirm, but they went ahead and extended the comedian’s run on Comedy Central through December 2026.

The channel’s parent company, Paramount, announced Monday that Stewart will continue to host “The Daily Show” on Monday nights and serve as an executive producer through the end of next year.

Members of the show’s news team will continue to share Tuesday through Thursday hosting duties. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.

“Jon Stewart continues to elevate the genre he created. His return is an ongoing commitment to the incisive comedy and sharp commentary that define The Daily Show,” Ari Pearce, Comedy Central’s manager said in a prepared statement. “We’re proud to support Jon and the extraordinary news team.”

Stewart’s contract was re-upped nearly four months after Paramount-owned sister network CBS notified Stephen Colbert, who rose to fame on “The Daily Show,” that it was dumping his late night show at the end of the season. The cancelation was revealed days after Colbert lambasted a $16 million settlement Paramount agreed to pay President Trump to end a lawsuit over edits to “60 Minutes.” Colbert called the arrangement “a big fat bribe.”

Paramount settled the Trump suit to win approval from the Trump administration of its sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners. CBS has said the reason for Colbert’s cancellation was financial, not political, although many people have expressed doubts.

Ellison took ownership of Paramount in August. Stewart has joked that he, too, might be tossed as the company tries to reposition itself to the political center.

Last week, the company began a deep round of layoffs, cutting 1,000 employees with plans to terminate another 1,000 in the coming weeks, in an effort to trim its workforce by 10%.

After a nine-year absence, Stewart returned as a host in February 2024. He had helmed the show for 16 years before taking a break in 2015. His current contract was expiring.

The show was hosted by Trevor Noah until 2022, when he stepped down. That prompted a rotation of guest hosts, including Kal Penn, Charlamagne tha God, Sarah Silverman and Michelle Wolf.

Last month, during a conversation with the New Yorker at a cultural festival, Stewart was asked whether he might stick around longer. “We’re working on staying,” Stewart told the New Yorker’s David Remnick.

The rotation of “The Daily Show” hosts also will include Ronny Chieng, Josh Johnson, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta, and Desi Lydic with Troy Iwata and Grace Kuhlenschmidt.

“South Park” is bidding adieu to its short-lived but buzzy Season 27.

The sixth episode of the year, which airs Wednesday on Comedy Central, marks the first episode of Season 28, a spokesperson from the network confirmed to The Times. (The episode will stream on Paramount+ Thursday.)

The reason behind the decision to end Season 27, which was originally expected to have 10 episodes, is unclear. But fans of the long-running satire will still get four additional episodes this year, if “South Park” co-creator Matt Stone and Trey Parker stick to the schedule they outlined. Fans had been speculating about the start of a new season after seeing television listings that coded Wednesday’s episode as the first of Season 28.

The new episode, titled “Twisted Christian,” follows a possessed Cartman, who “may be the key to stopping the Antichrist,” according its brief description. A short teaser also shows the students of South Park Elementary engaging with the viral “67” slang, an essentially meaningless phrase that has taken over Generation Alpha.

The recent episodes have been drawing strong viewership and have, as always, poked fun at topical issues and political figures including President Trump, immigration raids, tariffs and the FCC. Even Paramount, which bought the global streaming rights to “South Park” this summer in a $1.5-billion deal, has been the butt of several jokes.

Season 27 had an unusual cadence of episodes, with the first two arriving on a weekly schedule, then biweekly before the arrival of the most recent episode (and the apparent finale of the season), which aired three weeks later on Sept. 25.

The second episode drew criticism for its parody of Charlie Kirk, the slain political influencer, despite the episode airing weeks before his death. Comedy Central, which is owned by Paramount, announced it will not air reruns of the second episode of the latest season after Kirk was fatally shot Sept. 10 in Utah. The episode can still be found on Paramount+.

The final episode of Season 27 was the first to air after Kirk’s death, but Parker and Stone told the Denver Post the delay was unrelated to its content: “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true.” The pair issued a statement on Sept. 17 saying the episode wasn’t finished in time.

Future episodes of “South Park” will air every two weeks through Dec. 10.

Times TV editor Maira Garcia contributed to this report.