• NY Times, Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:32 PM

The publicity machine has started gearing up to promote Jon Stewart's hosting of the Oscars broadcast March 5, with his appearance on "Today" (he begged Katie Couric to come back from Italy already), and a piece in The New York Times detailing his preparations for the show. The article is full of snappy quotes, including this: "Asked if any particular celebrity should fear the wrath of Mr. Stewart's tongue, ['Daily Show' Executive Producer Ben] Karlin warned: 'Meryl Streep has gotten a free ride for too long. She's going down.'" Also check out the sidebar chart of audience numbers for Oscar broadcasts going back to 1990, categorized by host and Best Picture winner. We're partial to Billy Crystal and his song parodies ("Those eyes/those thighs--surprise! It's 'The Crying Game'"); in fact the Crystal-hosted 1998 Oscar broadcast, with "Titanic" the big winner, had the highest numbers, tracking 55.249 million viewers.

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