(Photo Courtesy NYtimes.com)

This year, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is slated to win yet another Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series. The Daily Show has nabbed the award for the past eight years running; since 2006, the series’ biggest competition has actually come from its spin-off and counterpart The Colbert Report. In fact, each year shortly after the Emmys, Stewart’s friendly rivalry with Stephen Colbert has played out on both shows. (Check out this clip of The Daily Show from 2006, the first year that Colbert and Stewart’s respective series went head-to-head.)

A bit of background information: When Jon Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn as host of The Daily Show in January 1999, he immediately revamped the series’ image, bringing a novel focus on politics and national news stories to the show (in contrast to Kilborn’s pop culture-centered subject matter). The “fake news” model proved exceedingly popular, and the series was nominated for an Emmy in 2001 and 2002, before winning its first in 2003. Longtime writer and correspondent Stephen Colbert launched The Colbert Report in 2006, which generally follows the same satirical news format as The Daily Show. Both shows have enjoyed immense success on Comedy Central.

In recent years, audiences have speculated that The Colbert Report may finally earn its elusive Emmy. At this time last year, critics expected Colbert to pull out the win because of his reporting from Iraq. However, it looks like The Daily Show--the longest-running series on Comedy Central--will continue to dominate this category. This is because Stewart was arguably the first to master the art of satirical news reporting; it was, after all, his popularity that served as a platform for Colbert. Until Stewart’s show goes under (which, hopefully, will not be anytime soon), it looks like Colbert will just have to wait for his time to shine. 

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