Stewart Skips Skydance Merger, Rips AI on Daily Show — SkimNews
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- Jon Stewart dedicated Monday's 'The Daily Show' entirely to AI, skipping coverage of David Ellison's Skydance Corp. merger with Warner Bros. Discovery
- John Oliver's Sunday 'Last Week Tonight' also passed on the merger, dedicating most of the episode to Secret Service failings
- Stewart invoked AI leaders' own 10-25% chance-of-extinction estimate while cataloging current uses he called 'mostly murder, surveillance and surge pricing for the McRib'
- Stewart attacked President Trump for letting AI companies self-regulate after a 'fawning AI summit,' citing Zuckerberg and Musk as untrustworthy stewards
- Stewart pressed AI leaders on what specific jobs the technology would create, dismissing repeated promises of universal high income as dishonest
- The Skydance deal would merge Warner Bros. Discovery — which controls Oliver's network HBO — with Paramount Skydance into a single mega-company
Why it matters: Two of late night's highest-profile hosts declined to mock a merger that would absorb Oliver's own network (HBO) into a Skydance-Paramount behemoth — a silence that itself undercuts any pretense of fearless media coverage from inside the consolidating industry. For audiences, the louder critique landed on AI regulation instead, a topic where Stewart had room to swing without implicating his employer's corporate parent.
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