Rick Ellis writes a good piece about the Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Crossfire and Novaks reactions after the fact.
I think Rick is dead on when he writes
You can see just one small indication of the problems facing old media by looking at the aftermath of Stewart’s “Crossfire” appearance.
While Friday’s show received decent numbers for an episode of “Crossfire,” that’s not the way that most people viewed it. Videos of the show were passed around online last weekend, from sites such as iFilm (where more than a half a million people have already looked at the video), to methods such as BitTorrent.
While it’s difficult to know for sure, my best guess is that the show has probably been seen by at least ten times as many people online as the original broadcast. And that’s without CNN providing an “official” feed of the episode.
The people who watched the show online are not typical CNN viewers. In fact, I suspect many of them would agree with Stewart’s assessment that “Crossfire” is depressing to watch. And yet viewers sought out the show, in ways that Robert Novak can scarcely comprehend.
Read the whole story: Everything You Think You Know About ‘The Daily Show’ Is Wrong
More coverage:
Jon Stewart, Again in the Crossfire – Washington Post