10 Amazing TV Shows With Surprisingly Weak First Seasons

4. The Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is awesome, right? Interesting political commentary with a comedic spin on it, brought to you by the always amusing and intelligent Jon Stewart. But what about The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn? Much less awesome. Technically, we're fudging the numbers on this one a bit, as Kilborn was actually on the show from 1996-1998 before passing the reins to Stewart, but it's too great an example of a major format change improving a show to pass up. Craig Kilborn's version of the show had a much larger focus on entertainment rather than political commentary, and operated more like Weekend Update than The Daily Show as we know it today. When Jon Stewart took over, the show became more of a news program that was funny, rather than a comedy show about the news. The rest is history: a Pew research poll found that 21% of people under the age of 30 get a significant portion of their news from The Daily Show and other programs that followed in its footsteps.