Late-night television is dominated by men, and mostly white ones at that. This is not news. But a Vanity Fair article that gathered all the hosts together for one photo has prompted Internet ire nonetheless. How could late-night TV be “better than ever,” as the headline claims, given the total absence of female hosts? (It was also recently reported that the latest addition to late-night, Stephen Colbert, has only two women on his all-white writing staff of 19.)
The accompanying article acknowledges in some depth “how gobsmackingly insane” it is that late-night hosts all share the same gender:
What’s conspicuously missing from late-night, still, is women. How gobsmackingly insane is it that no TV network has had the common sense—and that’s all we’re talking about in 2015, not courage, bravery, or even decency—to hand over the reins of an existing late-night comedy program to a female person? While Amy Schumer has acknowledged that she turned down The Daily Show, happy where she is at Comedy Central, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that Chelsea Peretti, Megan Amram, and Jen Kirkman, to name but three contenders, are alive, sentient, funny, and presumably open to taking a meeting. (And how great would Lea DeLaria be as an M.C., going places Ed McMahon never dared to go? It’d be weird, wild stuff.)
Fortunately, comedic redress is on its way, in the form of two new shows created from scratch, Samantha Bee’s for TBS and Chelsea Handler’s for Netflix. (Both shows are due in 2016.) Two female hosts plus the 10 men featured here is still a long way from a late-night that truly looks like America. But the next version of this story’s opening picture will be that much brighter.
Bee had her own ideas on how to improve the photograph.
Read next: James Corden Wants to Make the World of Late-Night TV More Diverse
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