you know, that s where we were starting from. one change that coincided with james s arrival was how significant pushing digital content was. we said we don t want to make a show that s for 12:37 at night. we re going to look at the prime time shows as our competition. we re going to look at breakfast news as our competition. and so we needed to control relevancy. the way to do that was make pieces that could travel around on the internet and that people could find and watch in chunks. we were like what can we do? we are in los angeles. all everyone seems to talk about is the traffic. is there a thing where like we pick people up to help james get to work and what if it s the biggest singers in the world and we sing along to their songs the way that people sing along in the morning on the radio. and then we just went carpool karaoke. sweet destiny and we went, that feels like a thing.
show, jon stewart said to me i think you should do it. that s when the whirlwind began. trevor had done very little up to that point. he had only done a couple of daily show spots. i said yeah, i ll put my name in the hat. i thought there was no chance in hell i would be chosen to host it. but he just seemed to have the intelligence, the poise, a point of view, a grasp of global politics, and he just felt like he could do it. growing up in the dusty streets of south africa, i never dreamed that i would one day have, well, two things really. an indoor toilet and a job as host of the daily show . so when i got to the daily show, the first and most important thing for me to do was not crash the white people s car. jon stewart was coming into their living room every single night. and now there is some random south african who is walking into your living room who you
aside from the jokes, you have to have charm. and i think that s the number one thing for a late night host. then jay called me, and he goes so i m thinking about maybe stepping down soon. i go whenever you want to do it, let s do it the right way. we should do a sketch. in the news all they do is say i m replacing you they think i can woo the demo when we took over the tonight show, i said can we maybe think about bringing the tonight show back to where it began, which is new york city. it s where johnny started the show. before that steve allen had done the tonight show there. late night tv started in that studio. that was a brilliant thing, update the sound, update the lighting, a new design for an ongoing tradition. jimmy fallon! have a seat. welcome, everybody. thank you so much.
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be able to tell them to not smoke pot. you can t just show up at 9:00 p.m. and be like don t get high. all right, good night, sweetie. when jon decided to leave the show, america had a hissy fit. what are we going to do? what s going to happen? oh, my god, jon stewart left at the exact wrong time. but i don t know that anybody could have predicted, you know, not only what happened in the world of politics but also what happened to the media landscape. it still feels like a dream a little bit. walking around the building today, nobody was making eye contact because i think there s so much love and pride filling the building right now that we just don t want to drown it. he was incredibly generous, authentic, and i totally understood why he became who he became. so i say to you tonight, friends, the best defense against bullshit is vigilance. so if you smell something, say something. we would certainly have been very happy to retain stephen colbert and put him on the