The Experiment With Diversity Is Over in Late Night TV, Suggests Dulcé Sloan

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 21, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 21, 2024 |

Late-night television is not what it used to be. As viewers continue to cut the cord and move to streaming and TikTok, it’s safe to say that late-night TV may be in its last cycle of hosts. When James Corden left, they didn’t replace him; they replaced the show with a cheaper-to-make nonsense gameshow, After Midnight. What will they do when Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert leave?

It’s not clear, but if they are replaced, it will be with another white guy. Because late night has already “experimented” with women and people of color, and it didn’t work, and they’re not going to do it again. And by “experimented,” I mean: They gave Amber Ruffin a Friday night show on a little-seen streamer and put Samantha Bee on a dying cable network best known for airing NBA games. That’s enough experimenting! The results are clearly conclusive! Late night only works with white men!

Those sentiments were echoed this week by The Daily Show’s Dulcé Sloan, who, in an interview with Late Nighter, acknowledged that she would never be offered the job of host of The Daily Show “because if they didn’t ask Roy [Wood, Jr.] they sure as hell ain’t going to ask me. If they’re getting rid of all of the diversity in late night, why would they turn around and ask me?”

In other words, the experiment with diversity is over. It’s white guys to the rescue.

“This is what’s happening with everything,” Sloan continues. “Look at all the shows that are getting canceled. [Hulu’s] This Fool was hilarious. It got canceled and nobody knows why. It looks like this is what the directive is. And so, I can’t worry about everything as a whole, because that just takes your brain somewhere it’s not supposed to go. It’s too big for my brain.”

She’s not wrong, and as we are in the late stages of late night, it looks like it will live and die by white men, save for a long stint with Trevor Noah, who was ultimately replaced by his … predecessor. I love Jon Stewart, but still, when things start to crumble, instead of trying something bold or new, executives get conservative so they can cling to a ship’s hull as it sinks.

Source: Late Nighter