It's official: "The Daily Show" really is "the most important television program EVER"

When it comes to stories not involving former U.S. senators and love babies, the MSM still is the alpha dog of the news cycle. Case in point: Michiko Kakutani weighed in with her opinion about Jon Stewart on Sunday and the blogosphere went wild. If San Diego's morning yakker Chip Franklin is any indication, talk radio will be all over this story today, too. (My chat with Chip is linked below.)

"Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?", was the headline of Kakutani's Sunday New York Times piece. Which is funny, because TV critics answered "yes" to that question when we gave "The Daily Show" an award for best news program way back in 2004.

But now with the NYT book critic's imprimatur ... well, it would seem that Stewart has finally attained the importance that used to be part of his show's branding, back in those heady pre-9/11 days (as seen in the above clip from 1999, featuring a rare on-screen appearance by Topeka native Stewart Bailey and TV's Tom Cavanaugh apparently filling in for Jon).

The difference this time is that the "Daily Show's" importance isn't fake -- it's real. And it's for a reason that Michiko Kakutani should appreciate: Jon Stewart is important because his audience is important, especially to advertisers.

"See this desk? It folds up"

The Times critic cites a poll of the people Americans trust most, done in 2007 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN," she writes. Kakutani adds that given the ever-climbing ratings for "The Daily Show," and the interest brought on by an election cycle, Stewart may well pass up those people the next time the survey is done.

You've heard the theories why: the absurdities of the current administration, the outrage over the war and the failure of the MSM to challenge it aggressively ... Kakutani, for her part, argues that "The Daily Show" rose in stature after it decided what it wanted to be when it grew up, and was aided by technology that made it easier for the show's writers to search and find damning news video in time to meet their daily deadlines.

We have come a long way since 2004, when the TV Critics Association give Jon Stewart a TCA Award for news rather than comedy. It was a controversial decision among some members. Jon sent us a videotape both accepting and mocking the honor.

"We're fake," he said, as though explaining a concept to a slow child. "See this desk? It folds up at the end of the day, and I take it home in my purse."

We got a laugh out of that; it was what we expected from Jon. What no one expected was CBS News president Andy Heyward going batpoop about the award. Heyward, who was on hand to accept the TCA Heritage Award for "60 Minutes," had words for Seattle TV critic Melanie McFarland after the ceremony. (McFarland had presented the award, saying the "Daily Show's" satire contained a "core of truth.")

Two days later, when he appeared before the TV critics for a press conference, Heyward was still steaming.

"I think Jon Stewart is brilliant," he said, "but in a year when '60 Minutes' Wednesday edition broke the Abu Ghraib story, to say that the outstanding achievement in news and information is a comedy program, which by Stewart's own admission is just for fun, makes things up, I suppose it's some kind of message to the news people."

But, he added, "Send me a telegram so I can get it, because to me it just seems really odd."

Send me a telegram. Hey, Andy, are you sure you wouldn't prefer a Telex?

I'm not going to rehash the whole "60 Minutes" Wednesday edition making-stuff-up and Heyward-resigning business ... only because I can link to it. But let's just say that no one's questioning Kakutani's judgment right now (well, other than this guy).

However, the Times story was published too soon to reflect another study, issued on Sunday by the same research center that did the "Most Trusted" poll, that suggests Stewart's brand of "news" is pulling in one of the most elite and desirable hard-news audiences in all of media. The report's scintillating title, "Key News Audiences Now Blend Traditional and Online Sources," belies a wealth of information about the fake-news audience and how it compares to traditional news audiences. Let's just say that in his cluelessness, Andy Heyward may have been in the right job running CBS News.

Beyond liberal v. conservative

Turns out "Daily Show" viewers are much younger and better educated than the average news consumer. And more than one third of "Colbert Report" viewers can answer correctly all three of Pew's "knowledge questions": the majority party in Congress and who the current secretary of state and British PM are. The report continues,

Some highly knowledgeable and attentive news audiences – such as The New Yorker’s, Limbaugh’s, Hannity & Colmes’ or Hardball’s – are older than average. However, age is not always a correlate of political knowledge: the CBS Evening News has one of the oldest audiences of the news outlets included on the survey; 63% of the regular viewers of this program are 50 or older. But just 10% of regular CBS News viewers correctly answered the three questions.

Drill down into that report and you'll see evidence that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are actually not fake news anchors so much as real news aggregators. They pull people in from various media-consumption cubbyholes -- all those niche blogs and specialty magazines and public radio programs and cable newscasts anchored by former sportcasters -- and aggregate them into a modestly-sized demographic that is off-the-charts impressive, if you're an advertiser.

Here, at right, I have reproduced one of the most interesting charts from the study. As you can see, "Colbert" and "Daily" draw audiences that are much younger, better educated and more politically knowledgeable than other media or the public at large. They are liberal, but as I've argued elsewhere, the liberal-conservative split is a red herring. Rush Limbaugh's and Sean Hannity's audiences are as affluent, well-educated and knowledgeable as their Comedy Central equivalents — but they are also much older. And most advertisers want a younger crowd watching their commercials.

I might add that most old media types are coveting these same people, too, and part of our fascination with demographics stems from our wish that somehow, some way, we might lure similar consumers to our newspapers and TV newscasts.

While Stewart and Colbert may be reaching portions of the under-40 demographic that the network news anchors no longer reach, there is a growing portion of the population that isn't reached by news at all, whether mediated through real or fake news anchors. Take a look at this chart from the "Other Key Findings" heading of the Pew study. The year before Jon Stewart signed on at Comedy Central, 1998, about one quarter of Gen-Y'ers ages 18-24 skipped the news. Here we are a decade later, there's tons more options for getting news ... and yet that metric has climbed to one-third of 18-24-year-olds.

As for the hope that as kids mature they'll get more interested in the headlines ... well, maybe. But the leap in people going newsless was almost as dramatic among survey respondents in their 30s as it was among the younger adults. Overall, 14 percent of the public fits this description of "the Disengaged," as Pew puts it.

Jon Stewart likes to say that people get their news somewhere else before coming to hear him satirize the news. I doubt that this overall trend in news consumption will hurt him, because it's clear he is already cherry-picking the best and brightest consumers out there.

The hard question for the rest of the news media is: At what point does "most trusted newsman" join "fastest railroad" as an outdated superlative?

• TV Barn Podcast: Jon Stewart and the 'most trusted' honor (MP3)