But his choice to leave after just seven years is a sign that late night has gotten smaller.
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By James Poniewozik
When Trevor Noah was announced, in 2015, as the replacement for Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show,” he was met with a resounding “Who?”
In fact, he was not entirely unknown. He had very recently joined the comedy-news show as a correspondent. What’s more, he was an accomplished stand-up comedian with a considerable following beyond his home country of South Africa.
Still, he had not exactly dominated the lists of top candidates to host a show that, for all the world maps in its graphics, was still America-centric. As Noah put it during his surprise announcement in September that he was stepping down, Comedy Central had taken a gamble on “this random comedian nobody knew — on this side of the world.”
America, after all, is a big country with a lot of blind spots. And one of Noah’s accomplishments, as he took a late-night institution in his own direction, was to expose them, and to widen, ever so slightly, late night’s field of vision.
Noah, whose last “Daily Show” airs on Thursday, was of course a rarity as a Black host in a line of work still dominated by white guys, taking over a show that had taken deserved hits over its treatment of race. (At the time of his hire, he joined Larry Wilmore, whose “The Nightly Show,” also on Comedy Central, was canceled in 2016.)
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