I'm currently reading "The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests" which has recently been released. It's interesting. I've so far read a tenth of it, and it's got some really interesting bits on the formation of the show, under Jon Stewart.

LIZZ WINSTEAD: Instead of Jon playing a character—the news anchor, one of the derelicts in a derelict world of media—Jon made a creative decision to take the show in the direction of the correspondents presenting the idiocy, and then Jon is the person who calls out the idiocy with the eloquence that the viewer wishes they had. And he did it in a way that’s not condescending, it’s not smug. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s calling out bullshit. So Jon became the voice of the audience.

JON STEWART: What we were also learning is that Colbert has a verbal equity that is second to none, and so, you could stuff ten pounds of shit into a two-pound sentence and he would Baryshnikov his way through it. Stephen has an agility, verbally, that’s unmatched.

Jon Stewart: [at RNC anchor desk] Now Stephen Colbert, our intrepid reporter, he’s been down on the convention floor all week for us, filing wonderful reports. Stephen, let’s go to him now. Stephen, now that the convention’s over, can you tell me, what’s your overall sense of the mood down on the convention floor? How did it feel to be there last night, during the speech?

Stephen Colbert: [with graphic identifying him as SENIOR FLOOR CORRESPONDENT] Well, Jon, as a journalist, I have to maintain my objectivity, but I would say the feeling down here was one of pervasive and palpable evil. A thick, demonic stench that rolls over you and clings like hot black tar. A nightmare from which you cannot awaken. A nameless fear that lives in the dark spaces beyond your peripheral vision and drives you toward inhuman cruelties and unspeakable perversions. The delegates’ bloated, pustulant bodies twisting from one obscene form to another. Giant spider shapes and ravenous wolf-headed creatures who feast on the flesh of the innocent and suck the marrow from the bones of the poor. And all of them driven like goats to the slaughter by their infernal masters on the podium, known by many names: Beelzebub, Baalzebul, Mammon, Abaddon, Feratis, Asmodeus, Satan, Lucifer, Nick, Old Scratch, the Ancient Enemy, and He Who Must Not Be Named. This is Hell, Jon, where the damned languish forever in a black flame that gives no heat, sheds no light, yet consumes the flesh forever and will not go out. Jon?

I love it. Reading about the show coming together under Stewart, Black, Carell, Colbert and so on is sweet.