Trevor Noah is in his final days at Comedy Central. The host of The Daily Show will leave his current role to pursue other projects, including more stand up comedy tours and producing a new docuseries.
On Wednesday night, he sat down with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner to discuss the media world he is leaving behind.
Noah did not sound hopeful when discussing the state of the media and its effect on the public. He said partisan media has changed the way Americans consume news and that has had a palpable impact on society.
“It’s just going to become worse because we don’t live in the same world anymore. You know? We would all meet in one place, whether it was for the news. People would watch, whether it was Walter Cronkite or whoever it was, people would watch the same news and then argue about it.”
While the vast array of entertainment options in the world is often cited as a good thing, Trevor Noah views it as part of the larger societal fracture. He reminisced about watching Murder, She Wrote with his mother in South Africa and wondered if there are shows families or friends watch together anymore. He also noted that when he gets on the subway, he knows everyone is listening to or reading something different. They could be consuming completely different and opposing information about the very same subject.
“I think what that’s done is it’s created a hyper-individualistic society where we don’t realize we aren’t living in the same world and you can’t agree on anything if you don’t agree on the same world,” he said.
Trevor Noah will host his final episode of The Daily Show on December 8. A report from Deadline says that Comedy Central may take a very different approach to the show and switch from a single-host format to panels of comedians leading the entire show.
