Your example of the Daily Show doesn't really hold up. If you use torrents, a lot of shows are up before they even broadcast on the west coast. If you use Hulu, the Daily Show is available the next morning.
Private trackers all fight to get the torrents up as soon as the shows pre. I'd recommend http://ninjavideo.net - They fight for pre, but are public, and offer direct downloads as well as letting you watch via the DivX web player. Firefox/chrome/google are now labeling it as malicious, but I haven't seen any evidence of that.
tvrss.net is an RSS for eztv.it
For the Daily Show in particular I usually just watch on Hulu. The eztv link is http://eztv.it/shows/1/daily-show-the/, and the March 2nd episode looks like it was posted about an hour after the east-coast showing.
I get the Daily Show and Colbert Report from there. I'm on east coast time, and I usually get it in time to watch the next day, but not always. It never comes in at night.
