DIVERSE VOICES
When it comes to American investigative comedy, cable is doing a better job of fostering diversity. “Yes, over at network TV, it’s still all white men – Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Conan O’Brien and Jordan Klepper,” says Bob Thompson of the Bleier Centre for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “But if you expand to cable and all the stuff that came out of The Daily Show – you’ve got two women, Samantha Bee, host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS, and Robin Thede, host of The Rundown with Robin Thede on BET.”
Thede, with her celebrated sketch-comedy roots, became the first African-American woman to be a head writer for a late-night talk show (The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore) in 2015. She’s now a third-generation Daily Show success – since Wilmore was groomed by Jon Stewart.
Thompson praises Bee as “one of the relatively rare female voices in this arena. Like John Oliver, she does a very strongly argued, impassioned half-hour once a week”.
The few women who have enjoyed talk-show success over the past three decades include Joan Rivers, the first female to host her own show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers (1986-1988 in syndication), comedian/actress Mo’Nique with The Mo’Nique Show (2009-2011) on BET, and Chelsea Handler, whose Chelsea Lately (2007-2014) ran on the E! network.
Asked by Mother Jones magazine why the late-night gender gap exists, Bee said: “When you think about the women who have come before me in that space, it’s such a small number of people. It’s really unthinkably small. I really don’t know why.”
For a while on Comedy Central, from September 2015 to August 2016, diversity prevailed in a way that had never been seen before, carrying the entire late-night block with its Daily Show hosted by a South African, Trevor Noah, and The Nightly Show, right after it, hosted by an African-American, Larry Wilmore. Wilmore, 56, however, despite his refreshingly honest Keep It 100 panel discussions on issues of race and US politics, failed to gain sufficient ratings traction with young viewers and was replaced by Klepper, 38.