TV

Samantha Bee Expertly Fixed This Photo Of “The Titans Of Late-Night Television” For Vanity Fair

Needs more dudes, obviously.

by Meg Watson  15 September 2015

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With both Jon Stewart and David Letterman giving up the game, and Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert stepping up into their places, there’s been much to talk about on the late-night scene over the past few months. Are we going through an invigoration of the genre or getting more of the same? Is it all destined to descend into an avalanche of viral songs, monologues and parodies? Also, where are all the women?

Seriously. They seem to have trouble even scoring a gig on the writing staff.

Appropriately, in their forthcoming October issue, Vanity Fair have tackled all of this in a piece by senior contributor David Kamp. While Kamp mounts an argument that this is in fact the best these shows have ever been, he also draws particular attention to the glaring problem they all have in regards to diversity.

“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?” he wrote. “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.”

Unfortunately, this message didn’t quite get through to the magazine’s social media team who shared the link with little context other than this photo which I’m 90 percent sure is just a screenshot from Mad Men:

People were fairly quick to point out the problem:

But none nailed it quite like former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee:

The article itself actually mentions Bee in a positive light alongside comedian Chelsea Handler — both of whom are currently developing their own shows.

“Two female hosts plus the 10 men featured here is still a long way from a late-night that truly looks like America,” Kamp wrote. “But the next version of this story’s opening picture will be that much brighter.”

He was so, so, wonderfully right.