January 25, 2020 • 52 mins
Following up on our women in game shows episode, here's a classic about the women (and lack thereof) of late night. Is late night television resistant to women hosts and writers? Cristen and Caroline explore the past and present of late night TV to answer a question critics and viewers alike have been asking increasingly in recent years: where are the women?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff Man.
Never told your production of I Heart Radios has stuff works.
Today's classic is brought to you by our past episode
on women in game shows. Game shows. Yes, because it
(00:26):
got I was started thinking about women hosting things in general,
and that's when I looked up, UM, the of the
Oscar host If you're curious, we kind of mentioned this
in a recent episode. UM. Nineteen of the seventies, seven
Oscar hosts have been female, and four of those were
Whoopi Goldberg. Only three women have hosted since nineteen, and
(00:46):
Whoopi Goldberg was two of those. Forgot yeah, god that
she hosted that it was a long time ago. Yeah,
it was. You just see I promised the blowing of
the mind. Um. And and then also late night host.
(01:07):
I got to think about that because right now, and
this is only very recently, we have Samantha b and
Lily Seeing and that's it right. Yeah, litly sing was
able to do the double tappa being queer woman of color,
and so she was one of the first, if not
the first late night of those titles. I think. So. Yeah,
(01:28):
so that's significant. Yeah, but we still have a long
way to go. It blows my mind that we have
two white men named Jimmy and then John. Yeah, very
very white. UM. And I like, I actually find it
a very palatable way to get my news is the
next day. I don't stay up and watch it, but
I watched the YouTube clips the next day of all
(01:50):
these things. So I would love to see more women
get in get in the game. Um. And Samantha By
actually just um acknowledge this called this out because she
did a piece on how the United States is one
of a very small number of countries that doesn't provide
parental leave. Uh. And she was saying, you know, because
(02:13):
she's the pretty much one of the only women in
late night, she might be the only person to cover
this story, and it does impact what gets covered and
what doesn't even Um, I know female writers in late
night that has been increasing. We've been seeing a lot
more of that, which was great. UM, so that that helps,
but things like that in influencing what's covered. And then
(02:37):
she implemented a her own parental plan for mental leave
plan at her her work and called out all other
late night hosts to do the same because that also
impacts how women are able to to get ahead or
not in in this industry and in all industries. And
then we were talking about before we started recording, this
(02:59):
is a matter of interest right now, it seems because
their TV movies made about it. Of of note, um
Late Night on Amazon Prime with Emma Thompson and Mindy
Kaling and then The Morning Show with Jennifer Anison and
Reese Witherspoon. So I guess we're coming to the point
where we really recognize that it's a problem, it needs
(03:22):
to change, and I'm hoping that we're moving in that direction.
And I will put a disclaimer here. I have not
seen either of those things, right, but I know they exist. Well, yeah,
I mean, Jennifer and Elson just won an award for
the show. So go ahead, go yeah, go ahead, go ahead,
and we hope that you go ahead and enjoy this
(03:44):
classic episode about women in late night. Welcome to Stuff
Mob Never told You from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we're talking about late night television, which is
(04:07):
kind of funny because Caroline and I don't really watch
late night television, at least not when it comes on
right yeah, I don't. I definitely don't have cable or
anything and watch late night TV. Never really have, aside
from things like Comedy Central shows, UM, and really any
any late night hosts that I ever see. It's just
because somebody in the office sent me a funny clip
(04:29):
from YouTube. Yeah, the I watch late night TV most
often if I'm traveling and stuck in a hotel. I
used to think David Letterman was really funny when I
was younger, but I think that was because it was
something that meant that if I was watching it, I
was up late and was watching an adult show. And
(04:50):
you probably didn't know all of the information that we
know now about his relationships with his female staffers. Yes
all like two of them. Yes, I then I wasn't
an enlightened ten year old feminist at the time. Um.
And the way that I would watch TV when I
was a kid is so different from the way I
would watch TV now, just by virtue of technology. I
(05:12):
have a TV on the wall in my apartment, but
it's simply hooked up to a laptop. But this is
nonetheless relevant to stuff Mom never told you, because there
has been a lot of conversation surrounding women and late
night TV in the past couple of years, with all
of the changeovers happening in terms of Jay Leno and
(05:35):
David Letterman, and the fact that with show after show
changing hosts, not one time has a woman been selected.
And the thing that pushed us finally over the edge
to say, Okay, it's time to podcast about this was
(05:55):
not too long ago when the announcement was made that
the Late Lay Show with Craig Ferguson, which I always wondered,
how did Craig Ferguson get that role just from Drew Carey.
He was just that hilarious and Drew carry That's right,
he was, and Drew Carey he was the boss. Yeah,
I totally forgot. I was just like, oh, he's some guy.
I know his face. I don't know where I know
his face from. It was Drew Carey. And they announced
(06:20):
that Craig Ferguson would be stepping down and he would
be replaced drum roll and his drum roll had been
going on for months and people thinking well, maybe maybe
this will be the chance for a woman to get
a seat behind the desk. No, No, he's being replaced
by British comedian James Cordon, to which my Twitter feed
(06:41):
collectively went ah, yeah, And you know what, Like I
have never I've never really paid attention to late night
in general, late night TV shows, But I've also never
found it important enough to even think about in terms
of the host, because I'm all, it's like, well, whatever,
(07:01):
They're just gonna put another white guy. Not that I ever,
like specifically had that concrete thought, but my whole attitude
about it is just like, well, I mean, whatever, why
does it matter. They're just going to slide another like,
middle aged white dude into that slot. But because that
is my thinking process, it obviously is worth us talking about. Yeah,
because while it might not seem relevant to our day
(07:23):
to day who hosts late night TV, it's quite relevant.
In terms of the comedy pipeline. Women in late night
are a rarity, and that, if you are a woman
in the industry, is indicative of this broader gender gap,
(07:44):
and it's sort of symbolic of how women tend to
have to work super duper hard if they want to
make a profession out of being funny. Well, to give
you an idea of where we were and where we
are today, we have pulled together a timeline from PBS,
Washington Post, and Flavor Wire that stretches all the way
(08:06):
back to September nineteen fifty four when NBC debuts Tonight
starring Steve Allen and it makes history as the first
version of the Tonight Show. And I'm not gonna lie.
When I first read that, my first thought was, huh,
Tonight starring Steve Correll. Wait, that's not right, but that
would be a funny show. Uh. Yes. So. Steve Allen, though,
(08:29):
is largely responsible for developing the late night TV format,
which is essentially a mix of a talk show and
a variety program. You tend to have interviews with celebrities
or notable people who need you to promote new films, albums, books, etcetera,
along with wacky skits and stunts. I wonder when they started.
(08:55):
I'm sure someone could tell me this, but I wonder
when they started introducing like wild animals on of those shows,
because I feel like every talk show or no late
night host has wild animals on at some point. Wasn't
it really with what's his name, Jack Hannah who would
wear his you know, his khakis and his snake and
would come on with his snake. Maybe to Johnny Carson.
(09:17):
Maybe I feel like it's probably Carson. It probably is,
and we will definitely get to him in just a second.
But in ninety seven Jack part took over Tonight and
he actually was not super jazzed about the format of
the show. Um. He cried censorship in nineteen sixty after
(09:37):
he made a joke about a water closet that was
edited from his opening monologue and he ended up storming
off and like disappearing for a month. Yeah, it was
kind of incredible. Yeah, he was like, screw you, guys.
And his Late Night rain came to an end in
October nineteen sixty two when Ed McMahon said, here's Johnny.
(09:59):
That's right. That's not just from the Shining for those
of you who don't know, that's actually from the Tonight
Show starring Johnny Carson. Uh. He ended up earning two
times the ratings that Jack Parr did. Um, and he
was sort of known for being the gatekeeper for comedians
at the time. He invited people on and it was
(10:20):
what Rick Newman, the founder of the comedy club catch
Arizing Star, referred to as the holy grail of what
a stand up comedian could achieve. It was career changing
basically from comedian to make it onto uh Johnny Carson's show. Yeah.
His audience was massive. He had fifteen million viewers a
night and he was the show. And because it was
(10:43):
so such an important show at the time, it was
also instrumental in launching some female comedians careers, such as
Betty White, who did appear in some skits, but more
significantly Joan Rivers. Yeah. Man, she she guest hosted ninety
three times in the seventies and eighties, and she eventually
(11:05):
became the show's permanent guest host from three to until
they had a big falling out. Yeah. And one thing
that's incredible about Johnny Carson in the eighties that demonstrates
just how much of a powerful figure he had become
in TV. He was able to finagle his contract to
(11:25):
where he was only hosting I think three shows max
per week, so he was barely working but making more
money than ever before. And in addition to Joan Rivers
and Betty White, there were other female comedians featured on
the show, such as Moms Maybe Philistiller, who've talked about before,
(11:46):
and Mira Elaine May who we mentioned in Our Women
in comedy podcast a while back and Tody Fields. So
there were ladies in the sketches, there were ladies in
the seat, you know, sometimes entertaining Johnny, but but being said,
in the nineteen seventies, Johnny Carson told Rolling Stone that
he didn't like quote the new breed of female stand up.
(12:11):
And that's a big deal because, like I just said,
he was considered the gatekeeper, like the gateway drug to
being an amazing comedian and a lane comedian. Elaine Boosler
talked about the Tonight Show with him, and she said, look,
it was all there was in the nineteen seventies for
a young comedian. There was simply no other gate into
actual show business, fame, making a living, or being recognized.
(12:34):
He thought we were aggressive, funny and aggressive. What a combo.
Uh Well, moving on to February two, NBC is like, oh, hey,
we're making so much cache from Johnny Carson, why don't
we open up a twelve thirty am slot and give
it to this old guy Letterman. That's when Late Night
(12:56):
with David Letterman launches, and it's then assumed oombed that
whenever Carson finally calls it a day, that Letterman would
take his seat right because he's right after him, and
they actually had a really good rapport and Letterman was
Carson's picked to be his successor. It turned out not
to matter at all. Spoiler alert spoiler I know I'm
(13:18):
getting ahead of myself. It's so exciting. Um. And then
in April n seven, we have Joan Rivers again. We
said we'd get back to her. Fox wooed her away
from Johnny Carson with a fifteen million dollar contract four
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Carson was so p
oed that she basically like betrayed him in his eyes,
(13:41):
did he never talked to her again. And not only
did he never talk to her again, but he had
so much like comedian muscle in that arena that he
basically said, look, if you book your person on the
Joan Rivers Show, you can't come onto the Johnny Carson Show. Yeah.
So if you are, you know, a publicist for a celebrity,
(14:04):
obviously you're not going to uh endanger your relationship with
Johnny Carson. So the show quickly tanks in October folds,
but not before a guy named our Cineo Hall steps
in a little bit to guest host for Joan Rivers.
And then in January, we have a little bit of
(14:27):
diversity happening in late night when our Cineo Hall gets
his own show. It lasts for five years, and Bill
Clinton at one point goes on plays the saxophone and
everyone's like, what, this is crazy? And that was kind
of though in more of a modern sense, if you
can call modern at this point of a viral moment
(14:51):
in late night, because you know, I I think it's
it's still such an iconic point. But wasn't that also
and correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't this also like
the first time that a politician really went on a
late night show and let loose. Yeah, And it wasn't
just like vote for me because I do these things
with my policy and whatnot, exactly going on and being
ridiculous and playing the saxophone, and people totally responded to it.
(15:14):
And so now fast forward to today and Obama, for instance,
during is elections and also as he's been in office
and has been pushing initiatives through, has used late night
television as a way to speak directly to the people
and show folks that he's just bury, He's just buried.
You know, he's a good guy, wears a suit wheel
yes he does. Um so. In the early nineties, though,
(15:36):
things start to get a little wonky. Uh More, people
are jumping in the fray. In May, Jay Leno takes
over for Johnny Carson. Oh my god, I already kind
of spoiled that because Letterman was Carson's choice. So everybody
is pretty stunned when Leno took the chair, and then
(15:57):
from toe, I'd note there was another woman jumping in
very briefly to the late night show ms Whoopi Goldberg.
I don't think I did not know this. Yeah, I
hadn't heard of it either. Granted it did not run
very long, but but Whoopy did get a show, and
I figured, you know, this is an episode all about
(16:19):
women in late night, and there are so few examples.
I was happy to just find another besides Joan Rivers
and Chelsea Handler coming up. So Whoopie folds. And around
that same time, we have politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
starting up on Comedy Central. As you see what the
pattern that is happening here is it? More and more
networks are paying attention and starting to carve out their
(16:41):
own spaces in late Night, and the same year Bill
mar gets a show on Comedy Central. CBS is all like, oh, hey,
we want a piece of this late night pie. Hey,
David Letterman, are you a little bit steamed about Jay
Leno getting the job that you should have gotten? Well, hey,
come on over, we have an eleven thirty spot straight
up against Leno. Let's make this late night war happen.
(17:05):
And just a month later, NBC premieres Late Night with
Conan O'Brien, which is also the same year that Fox
failed yet again by putting Chevy Chase on the air. Fox,
What are you doing? Fox? I'll just keep playing The Simpsons. Yeah,
And then the late night programming starts to extend into
(17:26):
the late late night, so you have CBS kick off
the Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, old Tom Snyder,
not of Snyder's pretzels, although when I hear Tom Snyder,
that's what I think of pretzels, good old saltic gug
and it makes me thirsty for some water. Okay, Well,
(17:47):
rolls around and we get another woman. Oh what's happening?
What's she doing? She is not in the show, but
importantly she's part of creating a show which you might
know and love. It's called The Daily Show. Yeah. This
is Liz Winstead, who is a liberal firebrand and a
comedian whose Twitter is very active if you want to
(18:10):
follow her. She created The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn
at the time, who came over oddly enough from Sports
Center on ESPN. I still remember watching him with my
brother when I was a kid and being like, he's funny.
So then we see the evolution of that show and
the Late Late Show because Craig Kilborn uh then went
(18:30):
on to the Late Late Show on CBS in nine
and then when he left in two thousand five, he
passed that show to Craig Ferguson. We have come full circle.
We get in the show, No, just kidding, there's so
much more to talk about, not to mention that John
Stewart took over The Daily Show in that's right, And
so once we get into the two thousand's all right,
(18:53):
let let's move to say two thousand six. What's happening
at this point is that you still have Bill Maher
doing his thing in HBO. We've got John Stewart rocking it.
We've got the coldbart Port going on, we have Leno
and Letterman still duking it out, and recently the premiere
of Jimmy Kimmel Live, so late night and Late late
(19:17):
Night completely saturated, totally totally all guys and totally all
white guys, if I'm not mistaken. But in two thousand
seven we get Chelsea Handler and she's she starts Chelsea Lately,
So that makes the third woman to get her own
(19:38):
talk show. From n four to two thousand seven, all right, yeah,
percentage wise, we're not doing so well. No, no, But
then a little bit of diversity kicks off to in
terms of male hosts. In two thousand nine we have
TBS is ill Fated Lopez Tonight starring George Lopez, and
then in two thousand twelve Bravos Andy Cohen makes TV
(20:02):
history becoming the first openly gay late night host with
Watch What Happens Live. And then from there things start
to get really wacky because Leno and Letterman are realizing
that their networks want them perhaps to leave at some point. Yeah,
(20:22):
so that you have the whole Leno Conan debacle in
Leno announced his retirement for the second time. Because the
whole thing, if you were under a rock, was that
Leno was gonna leave, Conan was going to take over,
and he did for like a hot second, and then
when I was like, oh no, wait, in the interim,
Leno got a really terrible show at the ten o'clock
(20:43):
slot every night. Conan was sent away. He was really mad.
Everybody was on team Coco. Now Conan has his own
show on TBS. Good for him, very funny. Um and
Leno then exited again. Yeah, to which Jimmy Fallon takes over.
And as all of this is happening, this is when
(21:04):
these big conversations up. Okay, well, is a network going
to tap a woman? We have so many emerging women.
Not not just like, oh, we've got some really funny
stand up ladies, as we have for forever. No, this
is when we already have a list comedic women here
are not necessarily waiting in the wings. But I think
(21:25):
people we're waiting with bated breath to see if oh, well,
you know, you could put Tina fe in there. You
can put I mean polar in there. Yeah you could.
Oh my god, just a show with the two of them. Yeah,
I would just I would just watch them talk. Would
you watch that late night show? Yes? Well, but I'd
watch it the next day. Yeah, the same here. But
that's that's the whole thing with viewership, which we'll talk
about a minute too. Like I mean, as far as
(21:46):
popularity of these shows, so many people are just watching
it either online or on their DVR the next day
or whatever. Yeah, And obviously that hasn't happened again and
again and again as these the slate of shows has
sort of gone through a recent upheaval in terms of
the host baton being passed to where where we're sitting
(22:09):
right now. We talked about The Late Late Show with
Craig Ferguson being handed over to James Cordon. We have
John Oliver getting his own show last week tonight, which
I personally watch and love. Over on HBO. You have
Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, seth Myers, John Stewart, Colbert who
(22:29):
will be taking over for Letterman when he retires, and
even this guy named Pete Holmes who comes on after
yet another guy, Conan. So you can understand then why
when that Late Late Show announcement was made, Even though
who watches the Late Late, Late Late Show, I don't know,
it was still a frustrating thing for a lot of people,
(22:54):
not just women in comedy, but also TV critics. Yeah.
I mean, if you go back and read any of
these articles big Kristen and I were looking at, I mean,
the tone of all of them is just like, hey,
are we maybe gonna get like a black guy or
or a woman in there, maybe woman of color? Even
like there's a Usha Tyler, like she's funny. No, you
(23:15):
want to go back in time and be like, no,
it's not gonna happen yet. And it's also not just
women writing these articles. Yeah, oh no, Yeah, everybody out
there who their job is to examine television. And this
is also nothing against the comedy stylings of Stephen Colbert,
John Stewart, John Oliver, etcetera, etcetera. All of these guys,
(23:37):
these younger guys too, are super funny. Absolutely, Yeah, they're hilarious.
It's just a broader question of but why why is
it so taboo for these networks to even broach the
idea of a woman host? Because the big argument that
doesn't fly at all is well, there aren't any suitable replacements.
(23:59):
Would we, I mean knew, would we be possibly put
in there? Yeah? I can't think of anyone besides maybe
like Tina Fair or Amy Poehler, maybe like Reetta or
Chelsea Handler. And you know, I mentioned I you should
Tyler and you know, I don't know, maybe like Amy Schumer,
like Tig Nataro, whoever. Yeah, Jane Lynch, Amy Sedera, Sarah
Silverman U. Tina Fey was actually asked about this, I think,
(24:19):
on the Seth Meyer Show, and she made a joke
about how the problem for a woman late night host
is that obviously you're gonna probably age with the show. Uh,
and at some point, you know, what do you wear
because you're gonna want to like be comfortable and you
want to cover your arms, and so you'll you need
a blazer. And so she said that it'll be Ellen
(24:43):
degenerous because Ellen already wears blazers. Because that's another thing
too that a lot of these articles don't note is
that when it comes to daytime shows, women all over
the place, that's funny, making all sorts of jokes and
doing all kinds of interviews and skits. TV scheduling is
so gender divided. That's interesting, Yeah, But when it comes
to the late night not so much. Uh. And NPR
(25:07):
TV critic Eric Deggen's weighed in on this instaid quote,
this is a problem. It's comedy led by a narrow
cultural point of view which tells everyone the way white
male see the world is what matters most. Yeah, and
I mean that's you can extrapolate that to a ton
of other stuff we've talked about, whether it's stem, whether
(25:28):
it's anything about getting different people's perspectives involved in things
often leads to better outcomes, and in this case, maybe
funnier outcomes. Well, maybe the networks aren't so concerned about
funny but rather money about that because another argument is
(25:48):
that it's not so much an issue of you know,
sure would been great to help a woman behind the dusk,
but think about your target audience. And the New York
Times is reported on how the late night audience tended
a note the past tense tended to be sort of
(26:09):
the Taco Bell demographic. It's it's younger guys, like eighteen
to thirty four. You're all guys used to be the
core of that after eleven PM audience, But that's not
so much the case anymore because that audience has been diverted,
particularly by programming like Adults Swim and also Comedy Central
(26:32):
with all of their late night shows as well. And
another big topic, especially for talking about majority men versus
minority women, is the writer's room. And we are going
to talk all about that when we get right back.
I'm a quick break. So when it comes to late
(26:57):
night TV, obviously the host is the most visible and
the entire show is centered around that host. But all
of those hilarious jokes and lists and one liners that
a host is reading off the teleprompter is the product
of a writer's room. Yeah. Yeah, you get a lot
of funny people together, right, some funny stuff. Just picture
(27:20):
thirty Rock. Yeah, and LUTs. I don't know why I
was picture lets when I think of that, but anyway,
and Lutts now writes, I believe for Jimmy Kimmel, either
Jimmy Kimmel or Seth Minders. His name is actually Lutts. Yeah, perfect, Um,
this is all a thirty Rock joke. By the way,
people don't know, Oh yeah, sorry, but yeah. So the
(27:41):
whole issue of the gender divide in writer's rooms really
kind of entered the news and our social consciousness in
two thousand nine when there was a big scandal with
Letterman that blew up. So for a long time, people
who worked on the Letterman Show were aware that David
Letterman tended to have affairs with female staffers and that
(28:04):
those female staffords would sometimes get more favorable treatment. And
all of that news became public in two thousand nine,
and there was this whole scandal. And this was also
around the time too that Jezebel, when Arin Carmen was
still writing for them, broke this huge piece about the
lack of women on staff at the Daily Show and
(28:27):
some allegations of even the women being who were working
there being treated in a discriminatory type of way. So
there was just this whole whole conversation happening, and nel
Scovell wrote about her experience as a rare female late
night writer in Vanity Fair timed with the news about
(28:49):
Letterman because, as she described, she she finally felt like
it was time to talk about it. Yeah, well, because
she was like, look, I don't want to sue anybody.
I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I don't
want to cause a big stink or spread gossip. But
she's like, there are people talking about this thing and
these issues who don't even know what they're talking about. Well,
and also that was the time as the news was
(29:10):
breaking for women and someone of of her clout to
be able to finally put a spotlight on it and say, yes,
there is a problem. Now that we're all talking about it,
now that we're all aware of it, this is what's
going on right. Um, So at the time that this
is going on, there were zero female writers on Letterman,
Leno and Conan, And in twenty seven years Late Night
(29:34):
and The Late Show had hired only seven female writers
who had spent a combined seventeen years on staff, and
like the male staffers, it was something like four hundred years. Yeah,
because for a lot of at least I'm a little
more familiar with Letterman. A lot of those writers, the
male writers worked there for years and years and years
and years. I mean they kind of grew up with
(29:55):
Dave and so as this was happening, of course, there
a lot of go to excuses for why most late
night shows have little, if any female writers, the number
one being well, women don't submit packets because and then
that essentially is a packet of jokes that if you
(30:16):
want to write for Late Night, if they're hiring, then
you think of all these jokes and all these different
kinds of jokes that would fit the show, fit the host,
and you submit what is called a packet. And so
these late night executives gone the defense and say, well,
women just aren't applying for the jobs, boo. But but
(30:36):
that's that's partially true. But it can be challenging to
apply for a job that you don't know is available, Caroline, right,
because you know, just a lot of a lot of jobs,
not just comedy. A lot of times you might hear
about a job from a friend, but if all of
those friends are dude friends, they're going to pass the
(30:56):
word on to other dude friends. And the comedy world
can be quite insular, and obviously on the whole tends to,
you know, swing more male. And so if you have
a writer's room full of guys and their comics, they're
probably friends with a lot of guys who are comics,
and that's and so you just end up getting more guys,
(31:17):
even knowing that positions are coming open, right, And Scoville
pointed out to that, Okay, well, so there are these
requirements for when you submit your packet or whatever, but again,
not everybody is familiar with them outside of this little
insulated circle of comedians, and so she was just saying, like, hey, guys,
why don't you just post these requirements online where everyone
(31:39):
who would potentially want a job and is you know, funny,
could actually see them and access them. Yeah, but even
when that happens, it is true that women on the
whole submit fewer packets, or at least we should say
that of all of the packets submitted, fewer are from women.
At a two thousand eleven panel reported on in Split
(32:00):
Sider that was focused around women in Late Night, the
co head writer for Jimmy Kimmel, Molly McNerney, said that
out of around two hundred submissions that she would get
at a time, only around thirty would be from women. Yeah,
and speaking of thirty, to give you a few more numbers,
there was a twelve study by the Center for the
(32:20):
Study of Women in Television and Film that looked at
the number of women on staff at these shows, and
they found that during the season women made up of
these staffs. In twelve that had jumped to a whole
big old number oft of the writer's staff. So a
little bit of progress, but not monumental. And some people
(32:44):
listening might be thinking, but again, why does this matter?
I mean, in this case, you're not even the host,
You're just a writer. But these just writers are writers
who will go on to be writing sitcoms, might be
going on to Hollywood to right comedies, might be going
on to starring comedies. I mean, this is really I mean,
(33:04):
if you can break into late night, it can open
up huge opportunities to be one of you know, to
help shape the you know, broader landscape of comedy and
pop culture well and and something that a lot of
women writers who have been interviewed a lot of the
challenges that they talk about are just the sort of
(33:28):
overarching dominant male culture that they come up against in
these rooms. The fact that you do kind of have
to shout to be heard, You do have to be
more aggressive. As Elaine Boosler put it back in the day, Um,
there's the whole thing about having jokes poached. And you
know that I feel like this is a thing that
women talk about in business and wherever, and many feels about,
(33:50):
Oh I have this great idea, I'm going to say
it and nobody is gonna respond or or like it,
or show that they even heard me, and then ten
minutes later somebody's like, oh, hey, what if we did
such and such a It's an idea, and it's the
same idea. It's just it was finally heard from a
different mouth. Um. Well, And and another challenge too of
being a woman writing for late night is that you're
(34:12):
writing jokes specifically for hosts, and almost ten out of
ten times at this point you're gonna be writing jokes
specifically for male hosts. And not to say that women
cannot write jokes for men, because there are women doing that,
but there are points of reference that some women late
night writers will talk about where their experience that they
(34:33):
can draw on personally is just not as male centric obviously. Yeah.
And then well then you have the issue too of
like the fact that you have to if you are
writing for a male host and you need to write
things for his perspective, you kind of have to sacrifice
your perspective or your female voice or any like sex
(34:53):
in the city jokes you have tucked up in your
brain or whatever. And so in that regard, you know,
some women might just opt to you right for other shows, sitcoms,
et cetera. Although based on what Nell Scobell was writing
about in that Vanity Fair piece, once you're finally getting
down to writing and comedy, it's almost as though she
(35:13):
she feels like gender should just fly out the window
because there's this thing um where one one thing she
noticed in writer's rooms, like this hesitation of women even
being in the room. Is this idea that well, then
you're gonna have to tone it down. Then you can't
make inappropriate jokes that frankly, Caroline and I can't make
right now on the podcast to give you examples to
(35:36):
which Scobell says, No, you don't have to be less
body if a woman is in the room, you can
be equally funny. You know, we can all be equally
gross and funny if we want to be. Yeah, she
was saying, we're your co worker and we're your comedy
writing coworker. At that we're not your wife, we're not
your mother, we're not your daughter. We're on a level
(35:58):
playing field, Like, don't feel like you can't cut loose
just because of vaginas in the room. So, speaking of Scobel,
who also in addition to Liz Winstead, has a very
active and funny Twitter account. If you want to follow her. Uh.
She put her words into action when it came to
the recent launch of John Oliver's late night show last
(36:20):
week tonight over at hbo UM. John Oliver actually talked
about in an interview how when they were looking for writers,
and Scobell specifically did something a little unconventional. She sought
out people online and magazines anywhere she thought funny women
would be writing and reached out to them directly. Yeah,
(36:43):
basically reached out to them directly and said, come come
working late night, add your voices to the cacophony. You
are needed. Yeah, and I don't. I think they have
two writers, two female writers, which that's not massive, but
it's still a presence. And I want to say that
there showrunner is also a woman. And I have it
(37:07):
on good authority that John Oliver is a fantastic boss
to work for as a lady comedian. And same thing
too with John Stewart, which made me very happy. That
makes me happy to Yeah, I'm glad to know that
my random, based on nothing assumptions about them are are accurate. Yeah.
When it comes though to a more historic writer's room
(37:30):
in late night seth Myers has an astonishing three women
writing for him, including Amber Ruffin, who is the first
black female writer in late night history. That's great. I mean,
didn't he do like a blind submission thing where he
was just like, give me the jokes and all. He
ended up getting a diverse writing group because of that.
(37:51):
It might have been him. I know that John Oliver
also did a blind submission, and I think for the
first round with packets, it is become being far more common,
if not the thing to do where you have blind
readings of the jokes so that you don't go see
a name like, oh, these jokes are from a girl
named Kristen, throw them away. They're going to be about
(38:14):
tampons um. But speaking of jokes, So, like everything that
Chris and I have been talking about right now, seems
like things are on the up swing. It seems like
the younger hosts who have the younger demographics watching them,
maybe it's more hopeful. Maybe maybe more women will will
stop up to bat and that includes not only behind
the scenes in the writer's room, but also in terms
(38:36):
of actual comedians, stand up comedians who get invited on
to perform. It's actually still pretty grim. Yeah, there aren't
that many women who go on late night shows to
do stand up, whether that's stand up actually on the
show that you would see on TV, or doing stand
up to warm up the audience. In two thousand twelve,
(38:56):
for instance, Uh, there were forty nine stand up performances
on The Late Late Show, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel, Live, Conan,
and The Late Show. And of those forty nine performances,
there were thirty eight white men, nine men of color,
and two women. Go gals. Yeah, but then last year
(39:20):
in a partner Nanturla became the first Indian woman to
perform stand up on US late night TV on Conan
and Kristen and I can say that we knew her
when well, we saw our performance stand up at a
conference we went to. Yeah we laughed at her jokes.
Yeah we didn't. We don't. Like we're not friends, but
we could be. She wants to be, and she's super funny.
(39:41):
Yet again, follow her Twitter to follow all these people's twitters.
But the question again is does it really matter because
we're talking about younger hosts. It is a new generation
of late night we have. You know, it seems like
there's a sea change going on. But you and I
(40:02):
don't watch late night when it comes on late night.
I think a lot of people watching might consume late
night television most often in the form of viral videos. Yeah.
That's one big way that Kimmel in particular and Fallon
have really found their niche is by producing these segments
(40:22):
that go bananas on Twitter and YouTube. Yeah, They're like
skits and things like that with guests that are easily
break down able and digestible. Like I had a friend
grabby and be like, you have to watch this, it's
so funny on Fallon And I mean it was funny, um,
but that doesn't mean I want to sit down and
watch the entire show. I'm just gonna watch this video
you sent me, exactly. And viewership has been declining for
(40:43):
late night steadily for years now. This was reported on
in Vanity Fair and they noted that, as we mentioned
earlier in the show, when Carson was on, he was
attracting fifteen million viewers a night, and then Leno in
the same time slot was only six million viewers, And
now Fallon has about one point eight million viewers a night,
(41:06):
which is significant because Jimmy Fallon on Twitter has eleven
million followers. Yeah, I mean you also have to think
too that, like, well, what else do people have to
watch when Johnny Carson was on, Yeah, that's true, exactly
did not have the YouTube's they did not well. So,
I mean the whole argument behind this, though, is that
(41:26):
these declining ratings don't necessarily matter as much because everybody's
watching everything on the internet. Like Conan. Somebody was talking
to Conan about how his ratings once he went to TBS,
We're basically cut in half after two weeks, and he's like,
I'm fine, I'm happy here, Like things are going great.
Everybody's watching me on their DVR the next day. I'm
(41:47):
fine with it. Yeah, And I mean even the basic
business model of late night television is downsizing and digitizing,
because this used to be a one million dollar per
we operation for a top tier show, but that kind
of money is crazy to spend these days. I mean,
obviously there's still a lot of cash it goes into
(42:11):
production for the big shows, but a lot of this
is still scaling down because the audiences are scaling down
and also getting older. They're getting older that Taco Bell demographic. Yeah,
they're not watching They're they're probably not watching late night television. Yeah,
Conan reels in the youngest median audience at thirty two,
(42:34):
whereas Letterman and Leno's median viewers were aged fifty six. Yeah,
and I wonder if that has gone down at all
with say, Jimmy Fallon taking on over for Leno, and
maybe if it will go down if you know, Colbert
brings his younger audience over when he moves to Letterman.
But fifties six, yawsa, that's that's that's that's older, that
(42:58):
is older age. But Amanda Hess is like, I don't care.
I don't care. Let them have it, let them eat cake,
Let them eat white old cake if they want to.
She said that late night talk shows are celebrity self
promotion vehicles, packaged with broad, sanitized humor that is highly
topical but rarely actually relevant. She basically talks about how
(43:21):
the humor is so broad that it's like, okay, kind
of funny, but it's really like not striking anyone's funny
bone to any sort of extreme yeah, because they have
to keep it super sanitized. And she was writing about
this over at Slate and went on to talk about
how if you want, you know, women in comedy, don't
(43:41):
put them behind the desk on late night and cramp
their style. Instead, we have things like Inside Amy Shumor,
Parks and Wreck and broad City that are making ladies laugh,
Ladies making ladies laugh. Now, Parks and Wreck is still
pretty ame because it's on Network, But for Inside, Ami
(44:01):
Schumer on Comedy Central and broad City on FX, I
mean they get downright body, Yeah, I mean Amanda has
has a point like who cares let them have it?
It's stupid, it's a dying medium or whatever. But you know,
a lot of it goes back to what we talked
about all the way back with Carson that you know
a lot of these late night hosts are gatekeepers for
(44:23):
not what's funny, but the funny that people recognize. So
the fact that so many of these comedians who come
on board, or the writers who are in the writer's room,
the fact that so many of them are still mail,
means that there are a lot of funny perspectives out
there that just aren't getting hurt. Well. I wonder if
there are any comedians listening. I would be curious from
(44:45):
an insider perspective, whether it would be even more important though,
to focus on diversifying those writer's rooms, because again, when
it comes to what those hosts are even going to
be spouting out to begin with, that is the product.
So I mean, obviously their delivery and some of their
you know, their comedic instincts as well, but by and
(45:09):
large their jokes written by their writers. So if you
diversify the writers, then you diversify what's on screen. And
I think they were. I mean, I I do think
that the comedy we're seeing coming out of the shows
hosted by you know, Kimmel, Fallon, Myers, etcetera, these younger
guys is fresher than what you would see on Leno
(45:30):
of the past and Letterman soon to be of the past.
But there's still progress to be made. So I want
predictions from folks of who will be the first female
late night host because at some point, if only, if
only to get the ratings boost that would happen, at
least for the beginning, a network is going to do it.
(45:54):
It will happen, But who's it going to be? Who
wants it? I wonder if these like, you know, I
wonder if Tina Fey really wants it. I doubt she does.
She can do anything she wants. I don't know. Maybe
Ellen does. If Ellen already has the daytime talk show,
but she's got I mean, but she has the daytime
show on lock she does have a huge audience. Yeah,
why would she leap over? I don't know. Now I'm
(46:15):
trying to get into the head of Ellen, which means
it's time for us to wrap up the show. So
and and yes, if there are any comedy writers or
comedians listening, definitely want to hear from you, any late
night fans. Let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is where you can send
us your letters. You can also tweet us at Mom's
(46:35):
Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook. And
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. Okay, Well, Kristen and I received a couple
of letters that we're going to share about our fraternity's episode,
and I have one here from a woman who would
like to remain anonymous. She says, thanks for the recent
(46:58):
story about fraternity's I was not involved in a Greek system,
but I'm now friends with guys who were in a
fraternity together. These men are not animal house stereotypes. They
are business owners and successful professionals. They are loving husbands
and fathers. They have vegetable gardens and volunteer in their
spare time. They are kind and generous men, and they
all have serious problems with alcohol. Drinking heavily was central
(47:21):
to how they form their friendships, and it continues to
be key to how they relate to each other. Abstaining
from drinking when they're together is like joining a game
of basketball and then sitting in the bleachers. Everyone stares
and wants to know what's wrong. When one of the
group tries to go sober or at least significantly cut back,
the others pulling back in telling him You're so much
more fun when you drink, or I'm so glad you're
(47:41):
drinking again. These men do sincerely care about each other.
For them, quitting drinking doesn't just mean giving up alcohol.
It means distancing themselves from guys who have been their
best friends for almost fifteen years. I can't imagine what
it would take to change the drinking culture within college fraternities,
but I wish the national organizations would do something to
help the thousands of guys who carry that culture with
(48:03):
them after they graduate. So I've got a letter here
from a guy also about our fraternity podcast, you would
also like to remain anonymous. And he has lots of
experience in fraternities because he has in fact served as
president of his fraternity at a large school. So he
(48:24):
he went through a lot of the different topics that
we touched on, and I can't read the entire letter,
but I do want to call out a few things
that he uh talked about. So he said, drinking, Yes,
we drink a lot, some more than others. There is
a saying that the only reason sororities don't care that
they are dry is because they can come and drink
for free at our houses. When it comes to hazing,
(48:47):
we don't haze. But then again everyone says that. I
will say that physical hazing has been replaced with psychological hazing,
typically with events that are designed to mentally stress the
new members in hopes that they shared dure us helps
the new members bond as pledge class. On the occasion
that there is an incident a k a. Someone screws up,
gets hurt, or someone gets caught hazing, charges are dropped
(49:10):
and honestly they should just be labeled assault and battery.
And then when it comes to sexual assault, he says,
we hate it as much as anyone and personally, nothing
makes my blood boil more. We especially hate the people
who take advantage of intoxicated women. To say it doesn't
happen is naive, but it's something that we as a
(49:31):
community you need to work on, and not just the
Greek community either. Just a final note, typically, yes, there
is one bad egg. Every house has that one insert
your favorite expletive who screws everything up for everyone. Everyone
I know says that joining a fraternity is the best
decision they made in college. The only complaint I have
is this habit of the media has to only report
(49:52):
on the problems with fraternity life and to answer your questions.
The main reasons guys typically don't stop other guys from
being quote bad apples is because they are your brother.
There is always a hierarchy within the fraternity, and typically
when you've been involved in the fraternity for a lesser
period of time, you feel less powerful. Something all new
members fail to recognize is that as the people with
(50:13):
the longest time left in the fraternity, you have the
most power to change the house for the better. My
house actually kicked out all of our quote bad apples,
A few years ago, and while money has been tightened
the meantime, we have never been happier as a house.
Members need to seize an active role in their fraternity
and decide to make it where they want it to be.
Fraternity life shouldn't be a lifestyle you join. It should
(50:33):
be a lifestyle you create for yourself and for your brothers. Yes,
you do join a house for the values they hold
and ideally your health to those values, and that is hard,
but the hard choices are the ones that typically need
to be made. If fraternity has focused more on recruiting
the best men they can, all of this would be avoided. Realistically,
there will always be that one fraternity that has all
the bad apples no one else wanted. Avoid them, don't
(50:56):
go to their parties, don't go to their events, don't
encourage your behavior, and they will hopefully go away. Forgive
me if I was a little ranty, but for dirty
life is something I highly value and hope that it
will continue well into the future. And that's not ranty
at all. As I actually wrote back to this fellow
of thanking him for his insight because that's exactly what
(51:16):
we asked for. So thank you to him and everybody
else who has written into us. Mom. Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address and for
links to all of our social media's as well as
all of our podcast blogs and videos, which if you
look in our videos and go to how to Talk
to Boys, it has featured a woman who has written
(51:40):
for Jimmy Salm, So if you want to see a
lady late night writer in action, head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff Man.
Never told your production of I Heart Radios has stuff works.
Today's classic is brought to you by our past episode
on women in game shows. Game shows. Yes, because it
(00:26):
got I was started thinking about women hosting things in general,
and that's when I looked up, UM, the of the
Oscar host If you're curious, we kind of mentioned this
in a recent episode. UM. Nineteen of the seventies, seven
Oscar hosts have been female, and four of those were
Whoopi Goldberg. Only three women have hosted since nineteen, and
(00:46):
Whoopi Goldberg was two of those. Forgot yeah, god that
she hosted that it was a long time ago. Yeah,
it was. You just see I promised the blowing of
the mind. Um. And and then also late night host.
(01:07):
I got to think about that because right now, and
this is only very recently, we have Samantha b and
Lily Seeing and that's it right. Yeah, litly sing was
able to do the double tappa being queer woman of color,
and so she was one of the first, if not
the first late night of those titles. I think. So. Yeah,
(01:28):
so that's significant. Yeah, but we still have a long
way to go. It blows my mind that we have
two white men named Jimmy and then John. Yeah, very
very white. UM. And I like, I actually find it
a very palatable way to get my news is the
next day. I don't stay up and watch it, but
I watched the YouTube clips the next day of all
(01:50):
these things. So I would love to see more women
get in get in the game. Um. And Samantha By
actually just um acknowledge this called this out because she
did a piece on how the United States is one
of a very small number of countries that doesn't provide
parental leave. Uh. And she was saying, you know, because
(02:13):
she's the pretty much one of the only women in
late night, she might be the only person to cover
this story, and it does impact what gets covered and
what doesn't even Um, I know female writers in late
night that has been increasing. We've been seeing a lot
more of that, which was great. UM, so that that helps,
but things like that in influencing what's covered. And then
(02:37):
she implemented a her own parental plan for mental leave
plan at her her work and called out all other
late night hosts to do the same because that also
impacts how women are able to to get ahead or
not in in this industry and in all industries. And
then we were talking about before we started recording, this
(02:59):
is a matter of interest right now, it seems because
their TV movies made about it. Of of note, um
Late Night on Amazon Prime with Emma Thompson and Mindy
Kaling and then The Morning Show with Jennifer Anison and
Reese Witherspoon. So I guess we're coming to the point
where we really recognize that it's a problem, it needs
(03:22):
to change, and I'm hoping that we're moving in that direction.
And I will put a disclaimer here. I have not
seen either of those things, right, but I know they exist. Well, yeah,
I mean, Jennifer and Elson just won an award for
the show. So go ahead, go yeah, go ahead, go ahead,
and we hope that you go ahead and enjoy this
(03:44):
classic episode about women in late night. Welcome to Stuff
Mob Never told You from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we're talking about late night television, which is
(04:07):
kind of funny because Caroline and I don't really watch
late night television, at least not when it comes on
right yeah, I don't. I definitely don't have cable or
anything and watch late night TV. Never really have, aside
from things like Comedy Central shows, UM, and really any
any late night hosts that I ever see. It's just
because somebody in the office sent me a funny clip
(04:29):
from YouTube. Yeah, the I watch late night TV most
often if I'm traveling and stuck in a hotel. I
used to think David Letterman was really funny when I
was younger, but I think that was because it was
something that meant that if I was watching it, I
was up late and was watching an adult show. And
(04:50):
you probably didn't know all of the information that we
know now about his relationships with his female staffers. Yes
all like two of them. Yes, I then I wasn't
an enlightened ten year old feminist at the time. Um.
And the way that I would watch TV when I
was a kid is so different from the way I
would watch TV now, just by virtue of technology. I
(05:12):
have a TV on the wall in my apartment, but
it's simply hooked up to a laptop. But this is
nonetheless relevant to stuff Mom never told you, because there
has been a lot of conversation surrounding women and late
night TV in the past couple of years, with all
of the changeovers happening in terms of Jay Leno and
(05:35):
David Letterman, and the fact that with show after show
changing hosts, not one time has a woman been selected.
And the thing that pushed us finally over the edge
to say, Okay, it's time to podcast about this was
(05:55):
not too long ago when the announcement was made that
the Late Lay Show with Craig Ferguson, which I always wondered,
how did Craig Ferguson get that role just from Drew Carey.
He was just that hilarious and Drew carry That's right,
he was, and Drew Carey he was the boss. Yeah,
I totally forgot. I was just like, oh, he's some guy.
I know his face. I don't know where I know
his face from. It was Drew Carey. And they announced
(06:20):
that Craig Ferguson would be stepping down and he would
be replaced drum roll and his drum roll had been
going on for months and people thinking well, maybe maybe
this will be the chance for a woman to get
a seat behind the desk. No, No, he's being replaced
by British comedian James Cordon, to which my Twitter feed
(06:41):
collectively went ah, yeah, And you know what, Like I
have never I've never really paid attention to late night
in general, late night TV shows, But I've also never
found it important enough to even think about in terms
of the host, because I'm all, it's like, well, whatever,
(07:01):
They're just gonna put another white guy. Not that I ever,
like specifically had that concrete thought, but my whole attitude
about it is just like, well, I mean, whatever, why
does it matter. They're just going to slide another like,
middle aged white dude into that slot. But because that
is my thinking process, it obviously is worth us talking about. Yeah,
because while it might not seem relevant to our day
(07:23):
to day who hosts late night TV, it's quite relevant.
In terms of the comedy pipeline. Women in late night
are a rarity, and that, if you are a woman
in the industry, is indicative of this broader gender gap,
(07:44):
and it's sort of symbolic of how women tend to
have to work super duper hard if they want to
make a profession out of being funny. Well, to give
you an idea of where we were and where we
are today, we have pulled together a timeline from PBS,
Washington Post, and Flavor Wire that stretches all the way
(08:06):
back to September nineteen fifty four when NBC debuts Tonight
starring Steve Allen and it makes history as the first
version of the Tonight Show. And I'm not gonna lie.
When I first read that, my first thought was, huh,
Tonight starring Steve Correll. Wait, that's not right, but that
would be a funny show. Uh. Yes. So. Steve Allen, though,
(08:29):
is largely responsible for developing the late night TV format,
which is essentially a mix of a talk show and
a variety program. You tend to have interviews with celebrities
or notable people who need you to promote new films, albums, books, etcetera,
along with wacky skits and stunts. I wonder when they started.
(08:55):
I'm sure someone could tell me this, but I wonder
when they started introducing like wild animals on of those shows,
because I feel like every talk show or no late
night host has wild animals on at some point. Wasn't
it really with what's his name, Jack Hannah who would
wear his you know, his khakis and his snake and
would come on with his snake. Maybe to Johnny Carson.
(09:17):
Maybe I feel like it's probably Carson. It probably is,
and we will definitely get to him in just a second.
But in ninety seven Jack part took over Tonight and
he actually was not super jazzed about the format of
the show. Um. He cried censorship in nineteen sixty after
(09:37):
he made a joke about a water closet that was
edited from his opening monologue and he ended up storming
off and like disappearing for a month. Yeah, it was
kind of incredible. Yeah, he was like, screw you, guys.
And his Late Night rain came to an end in
October nineteen sixty two when Ed McMahon said, here's Johnny.
(09:59):
That's right. That's not just from the Shining for those
of you who don't know, that's actually from the Tonight
Show starring Johnny Carson. Uh. He ended up earning two
times the ratings that Jack Parr did. Um, and he
was sort of known for being the gatekeeper for comedians
at the time. He invited people on and it was
(10:20):
what Rick Newman, the founder of the comedy club catch
Arizing Star, referred to as the holy grail of what
a stand up comedian could achieve. It was career changing
basically from comedian to make it onto uh Johnny Carson's show. Yeah.
His audience was massive. He had fifteen million viewers a
night and he was the show. And because it was
(10:43):
so such an important show at the time, it was
also instrumental in launching some female comedians careers, such as
Betty White, who did appear in some skits, but more
significantly Joan Rivers. Yeah. Man, she she guest hosted ninety
three times in the seventies and eighties, and she eventually
(11:05):
became the show's permanent guest host from three to until
they had a big falling out. Yeah. And one thing
that's incredible about Johnny Carson in the eighties that demonstrates
just how much of a powerful figure he had become
in TV. He was able to finagle his contract to
(11:25):
where he was only hosting I think three shows max
per week, so he was barely working but making more
money than ever before. And in addition to Joan Rivers
and Betty White, there were other female comedians featured on
the show, such as Moms Maybe Philistiller, who've talked about before,
(11:46):
and Mira Elaine May who we mentioned in Our Women
in comedy podcast a while back and Tody Fields. So
there were ladies in the sketches, there were ladies in
the seat, you know, sometimes entertaining Johnny, but but being said,
in the nineteen seventies, Johnny Carson told Rolling Stone that
he didn't like quote the new breed of female stand up.
(12:11):
And that's a big deal because, like I just said,
he was considered the gatekeeper, like the gateway drug to
being an amazing comedian and a lane comedian. Elaine Boosler
talked about the Tonight Show with him, and she said, look,
it was all there was in the nineteen seventies for
a young comedian. There was simply no other gate into
actual show business, fame, making a living, or being recognized.
(12:34):
He thought we were aggressive, funny and aggressive. What a combo.
Uh Well, moving on to February two, NBC is like, oh, hey,
we're making so much cache from Johnny Carson, why don't
we open up a twelve thirty am slot and give
it to this old guy Letterman. That's when Late Night
(12:56):
with David Letterman launches, and it's then assumed oombed that
whenever Carson finally calls it a day, that Letterman would
take his seat right because he's right after him, and
they actually had a really good rapport and Letterman was
Carson's picked to be his successor. It turned out not
to matter at all. Spoiler alert spoiler I know I'm
(13:18):
getting ahead of myself. It's so exciting. Um. And then
in April n seven, we have Joan Rivers again. We
said we'd get back to her. Fox wooed her away
from Johnny Carson with a fifteen million dollar contract four
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Carson was so p
oed that she basically like betrayed him in his eyes,
(13:41):
did he never talked to her again. And not only
did he never talk to her again, but he had
so much like comedian muscle in that arena that he
basically said, look, if you book your person on the
Joan Rivers Show, you can't come onto the Johnny Carson Show. Yeah.
So if you are, you know, a publicist for a celebrity,
(14:04):
obviously you're not going to uh endanger your relationship with
Johnny Carson. So the show quickly tanks in October folds,
but not before a guy named our Cineo Hall steps
in a little bit to guest host for Joan Rivers.
And then in January, we have a little bit of
(14:27):
diversity happening in late night when our Cineo Hall gets
his own show. It lasts for five years, and Bill
Clinton at one point goes on plays the saxophone and
everyone's like, what, this is crazy? And that was kind
of though in more of a modern sense, if you
can call modern at this point of a viral moment
(14:51):
in late night, because you know, I I think it's
it's still such an iconic point. But wasn't that also
and correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't this also like
the first time that a politician really went on a
late night show and let loose. Yeah, And it wasn't
just like vote for me because I do these things
with my policy and whatnot, exactly going on and being
ridiculous and playing the saxophone, and people totally responded to it.
(15:14):
And so now fast forward to today and Obama, for instance,
during is elections and also as he's been in office
and has been pushing initiatives through, has used late night
television as a way to speak directly to the people
and show folks that he's just bury, He's just buried.
You know, he's a good guy, wears a suit wheel
yes he does. Um so. In the early nineties, though,
(15:36):
things start to get a little wonky. Uh More, people
are jumping in the fray. In May, Jay Leno takes
over for Johnny Carson. Oh my god, I already kind
of spoiled that because Letterman was Carson's choice. So everybody
is pretty stunned when Leno took the chair, and then
(15:57):
from toe, I'd note there was another woman jumping in
very briefly to the late night show ms Whoopi Goldberg.
I don't think I did not know this. Yeah, I
hadn't heard of it either. Granted it did not run
very long, but but Whoopy did get a show, and
I figured, you know, this is an episode all about
(16:19):
women in late night, and there are so few examples.
I was happy to just find another besides Joan Rivers
and Chelsea Handler coming up. So Whoopie folds. And around
that same time, we have politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
starting up on Comedy Central. As you see what the
pattern that is happening here is it? More and more
networks are paying attention and starting to carve out their
(16:41):
own spaces in late Night, and the same year Bill
mar gets a show on Comedy Central. CBS is all like, oh, hey,
we want a piece of this late night pie. Hey,
David Letterman, are you a little bit steamed about Jay
Leno getting the job that you should have gotten? Well, hey,
come on over, we have an eleven thirty spot straight
up against Leno. Let's make this late night war happen.
(17:05):
And just a month later, NBC premieres Late Night with
Conan O'Brien, which is also the same year that Fox
failed yet again by putting Chevy Chase on the air. Fox,
What are you doing? Fox? I'll just keep playing The Simpsons. Yeah,
And then the late night programming starts to extend into
(17:26):
the late late night, so you have CBS kick off
the Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, old Tom Snyder,
not of Snyder's pretzels, although when I hear Tom Snyder,
that's what I think of pretzels, good old saltic gug
and it makes me thirsty for some water. Okay, Well,
(17:47):
rolls around and we get another woman. Oh what's happening?
What's she doing? She is not in the show, but
importantly she's part of creating a show which you might
know and love. It's called The Daily Show. Yeah. This
is Liz Winstead, who is a liberal firebrand and a
comedian whose Twitter is very active if you want to
(18:10):
follow her. She created The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn
at the time, who came over oddly enough from Sports
Center on ESPN. I still remember watching him with my
brother when I was a kid and being like, he's funny.
So then we see the evolution of that show and
the Late Late Show because Craig Kilborn uh then went
(18:30):
on to the Late Late Show on CBS in nine
and then when he left in two thousand five, he
passed that show to Craig Ferguson. We have come full circle.
We get in the show, No, just kidding, there's so
much more to talk about, not to mention that John
Stewart took over The Daily Show in that's right, And
so once we get into the two thousand's all right,
(18:53):
let let's move to say two thousand six. What's happening
at this point is that you still have Bill Maher
doing his thing in HBO. We've got John Stewart rocking it.
We've got the coldbart Port going on, we have Leno
and Letterman still duking it out, and recently the premiere
of Jimmy Kimmel Live, so late night and Late late
(19:17):
Night completely saturated, totally totally all guys and totally all
white guys, if I'm not mistaken. But in two thousand
seven we get Chelsea Handler and she's she starts Chelsea Lately,
So that makes the third woman to get her own
(19:38):
talk show. From n four to two thousand seven, all right, yeah,
percentage wise, we're not doing so well. No, no, But
then a little bit of diversity kicks off to in
terms of male hosts. In two thousand nine we have
TBS is ill Fated Lopez Tonight starring George Lopez, and
then in two thousand twelve Bravos Andy Cohen makes TV
(20:02):
history becoming the first openly gay late night host with
Watch What Happens Live. And then from there things start
to get really wacky because Leno and Letterman are realizing
that their networks want them perhaps to leave at some point. Yeah,
(20:22):
so that you have the whole Leno Conan debacle in
Leno announced his retirement for the second time. Because the
whole thing, if you were under a rock, was that
Leno was gonna leave, Conan was going to take over,
and he did for like a hot second, and then
when I was like, oh no, wait, in the interim,
Leno got a really terrible show at the ten o'clock
(20:43):
slot every night. Conan was sent away. He was really mad.
Everybody was on team Coco. Now Conan has his own
show on TBS. Good for him, very funny. Um and
Leno then exited again. Yeah, to which Jimmy Fallon takes over.
And as all of this is happening, this is when
(21:04):
these big conversations up. Okay, well, is a network going
to tap a woman? We have so many emerging women.
Not not just like, oh, we've got some really funny
stand up ladies, as we have for forever. No, this
is when we already have a list comedic women here
are not necessarily waiting in the wings. But I think
(21:25):
people we're waiting with bated breath to see if oh, well,
you know, you could put Tina fe in there. You
can put I mean polar in there. Yeah you could.
Oh my god, just a show with the two of them. Yeah,
I would just I would just watch them talk. Would
you watch that late night show? Yes? Well, but I'd
watch it the next day. Yeah, the same here. But
that's that's the whole thing with viewership, which we'll talk
about a minute too. Like I mean, as far as
(21:46):
popularity of these shows, so many people are just watching
it either online or on their DVR the next day
or whatever. Yeah, And obviously that hasn't happened again and
again and again as these the slate of shows has
sort of gone through a recent upheaval in terms of
the host baton being passed to where where we're sitting
(22:09):
right now. We talked about The Late Late Show with
Craig Ferguson being handed over to James Cordon. We have
John Oliver getting his own show last week tonight, which
I personally watch and love. Over on HBO. You have
Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, seth Myers, John Stewart, Colbert who
(22:29):
will be taking over for Letterman when he retires, and
even this guy named Pete Holmes who comes on after
yet another guy, Conan. So you can understand then why
when that Late Late Show announcement was made, Even though
who watches the Late Late, Late Late Show, I don't know,
it was still a frustrating thing for a lot of people,
(22:54):
not just women in comedy, but also TV critics. Yeah.
I mean, if you go back and read any of
these articles big Kristen and I were looking at, I mean,
the tone of all of them is just like, hey,
are we maybe gonna get like a black guy or
or a woman in there, maybe woman of color? Even
like there's a Usha Tyler, like she's funny. No, you
(23:15):
want to go back in time and be like, no,
it's not gonna happen yet. And it's also not just
women writing these articles. Yeah, oh no, Yeah, everybody out
there who their job is to examine television. And this
is also nothing against the comedy stylings of Stephen Colbert,
John Stewart, John Oliver, etcetera, etcetera. All of these guys,
(23:37):
these younger guys too, are super funny. Absolutely, Yeah, they're hilarious.
It's just a broader question of but why why is
it so taboo for these networks to even broach the
idea of a woman host? Because the big argument that
doesn't fly at all is well, there aren't any suitable replacements.
(23:59):
Would we, I mean knew, would we be possibly put
in there? Yeah? I can't think of anyone besides maybe
like Tina Fair or Amy Poehler, maybe like Reetta or
Chelsea Handler. And you know, I mentioned I you should
Tyler and you know, I don't know, maybe like Amy Schumer,
like Tig Nataro, whoever. Yeah, Jane Lynch, Amy Sedera, Sarah
Silverman U. Tina Fey was actually asked about this, I think,
(24:19):
on the Seth Meyer Show, and she made a joke
about how the problem for a woman late night host
is that obviously you're gonna probably age with the show. Uh,
and at some point, you know, what do you wear
because you're gonna want to like be comfortable and you
want to cover your arms, and so you'll you need
a blazer. And so she said that it'll be Ellen
(24:43):
degenerous because Ellen already wears blazers. Because that's another thing
too that a lot of these articles don't note is
that when it comes to daytime shows, women all over
the place, that's funny, making all sorts of jokes and
doing all kinds of interviews and skits. TV scheduling is
so gender divided. That's interesting, Yeah, But when it comes
to the late night not so much. Uh. And NPR
(25:07):
TV critic Eric Deggen's weighed in on this instaid quote,
this is a problem. It's comedy led by a narrow
cultural point of view which tells everyone the way white
male see the world is what matters most. Yeah, and
I mean that's you can extrapolate that to a ton
of other stuff we've talked about, whether it's stem, whether
(25:28):
it's anything about getting different people's perspectives involved in things
often leads to better outcomes, and in this case, maybe
funnier outcomes. Well, maybe the networks aren't so concerned about
funny but rather money about that because another argument is
(25:48):
that it's not so much an issue of you know,
sure would been great to help a woman behind the dusk,
but think about your target audience. And the New York
Times is reported on how the late night audience tended
a note the past tense tended to be sort of
(26:09):
the Taco Bell demographic. It's it's younger guys, like eighteen
to thirty four. You're all guys used to be the
core of that after eleven PM audience, But that's not
so much the case anymore because that audience has been diverted,
particularly by programming like Adults Swim and also Comedy Central
(26:32):
with all of their late night shows as well. And
another big topic, especially for talking about majority men versus
minority women, is the writer's room. And we are going
to talk all about that when we get right back.
I'm a quick break. So when it comes to late
(26:57):
night TV, obviously the host is the most visible and
the entire show is centered around that host. But all
of those hilarious jokes and lists and one liners that
a host is reading off the teleprompter is the product
of a writer's room. Yeah. Yeah, you get a lot
of funny people together, right, some funny stuff. Just picture
(27:20):
thirty Rock. Yeah, and LUTs. I don't know why I
was picture lets when I think of that, but anyway,
and Lutts now writes, I believe for Jimmy Kimmel, either
Jimmy Kimmel or Seth Minders. His name is actually Lutts. Yeah, perfect, Um,
this is all a thirty Rock joke. By the way,
people don't know, Oh yeah, sorry, but yeah. So the
(27:41):
whole issue of the gender divide in writer's rooms really
kind of entered the news and our social consciousness in
two thousand nine when there was a big scandal with
Letterman that blew up. So for a long time, people
who worked on the Letterman Show were aware that David
Letterman tended to have affairs with female staffers and that
(28:04):
those female staffords would sometimes get more favorable treatment. And
all of that news became public in two thousand nine,
and there was this whole scandal. And this was also
around the time too that Jezebel, when Arin Carmen was
still writing for them, broke this huge piece about the
lack of women on staff at the Daily Show and
(28:27):
some allegations of even the women being who were working
there being treated in a discriminatory type of way. So
there was just this whole whole conversation happening, and nel
Scovell wrote about her experience as a rare female late
night writer in Vanity Fair timed with the news about
(28:49):
Letterman because, as she described, she she finally felt like
it was time to talk about it. Yeah, well, because
she was like, look, I don't want to sue anybody.
I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I don't
want to cause a big stink or spread gossip. But
she's like, there are people talking about this thing and
these issues who don't even know what they're talking about. Well,
and also that was the time as the news was
(29:10):
breaking for women and someone of of her clout to
be able to finally put a spotlight on it and say, yes,
there is a problem. Now that we're all talking about it,
now that we're all aware of it, this is what's
going on right. Um, So at the time that this
is going on, there were zero female writers on Letterman,
Leno and Conan, And in twenty seven years Late Night
(29:34):
and The Late Show had hired only seven female writers
who had spent a combined seventeen years on staff, and
like the male staffers, it was something like four hundred years. Yeah,
because for a lot of at least I'm a little
more familiar with Letterman. A lot of those writers, the
male writers worked there for years and years and years
and years. I mean they kind of grew up with
(29:55):
Dave and so as this was happening, of course, there
a lot of go to excuses for why most late
night shows have little, if any female writers, the number
one being well, women don't submit packets because and then
that essentially is a packet of jokes that if you
(30:16):
want to write for Late Night, if they're hiring, then
you think of all these jokes and all these different
kinds of jokes that would fit the show, fit the host,
and you submit what is called a packet. And so
these late night executives gone the defense and say, well,
women just aren't applying for the jobs, boo. But but
(30:36):
that's that's partially true. But it can be challenging to
apply for a job that you don't know is available, Caroline, right,
because you know, just a lot of a lot of jobs,
not just comedy. A lot of times you might hear
about a job from a friend, but if all of
those friends are dude friends, they're going to pass the
(30:56):
word on to other dude friends. And the comedy world
can be quite insular, and obviously on the whole tends to,
you know, swing more male. And so if you have
a writer's room full of guys and their comics, they're
probably friends with a lot of guys who are comics,
and that's and so you just end up getting more guys,
(31:17):
even knowing that positions are coming open, right, And Scoville
pointed out to that, Okay, well, so there are these
requirements for when you submit your packet or whatever, but again,
not everybody is familiar with them outside of this little
insulated circle of comedians, and so she was just saying, like, hey, guys,
why don't you just post these requirements online where everyone
(31:39):
who would potentially want a job and is you know, funny,
could actually see them and access them. Yeah, but even
when that happens, it is true that women on the
whole submit fewer packets, or at least we should say
that of all of the packets submitted, fewer are from women.
At a two thousand eleven panel reported on in Split
(32:00):
Sider that was focused around women in Late Night, the
co head writer for Jimmy Kimmel, Molly McNerney, said that
out of around two hundred submissions that she would get
at a time, only around thirty would be from women. Yeah,
and speaking of thirty, to give you a few more numbers,
there was a twelve study by the Center for the
(32:20):
Study of Women in Television and Film that looked at
the number of women on staff at these shows, and
they found that during the season women made up of
these staffs. In twelve that had jumped to a whole
big old number oft of the writer's staff. So a
little bit of progress, but not monumental. And some people
(32:44):
listening might be thinking, but again, why does this matter?
I mean, in this case, you're not even the host,
You're just a writer. But these just writers are writers
who will go on to be writing sitcoms, might be
going on to Hollywood to right comedies, might be going
on to starring comedies. I mean, this is really I mean,
(33:04):
if you can break into late night, it can open
up huge opportunities to be one of you know, to
help shape the you know, broader landscape of comedy and
pop culture well and and something that a lot of
women writers who have been interviewed a lot of the
challenges that they talk about are just the sort of
(33:28):
overarching dominant male culture that they come up against in
these rooms. The fact that you do kind of have
to shout to be heard, You do have to be
more aggressive. As Elaine Boosler put it back in the day, Um,
there's the whole thing about having jokes poached. And you
know that I feel like this is a thing that
women talk about in business and wherever, and many feels about,
(33:50):
Oh I have this great idea, I'm going to say
it and nobody is gonna respond or or like it,
or show that they even heard me, and then ten
minutes later somebody's like, oh, hey, what if we did
such and such a It's an idea, and it's the
same idea. It's just it was finally heard from a
different mouth. Um. Well, And and another challenge too of
being a woman writing for late night is that you're
(34:12):
writing jokes specifically for hosts, and almost ten out of
ten times at this point you're gonna be writing jokes
specifically for male hosts. And not to say that women
cannot write jokes for men, because there are women doing that,
but there are points of reference that some women late
night writers will talk about where their experience that they
(34:33):
can draw on personally is just not as male centric obviously. Yeah.
And then well then you have the issue too of
like the fact that you have to if you are
writing for a male host and you need to write
things for his perspective, you kind of have to sacrifice
your perspective or your female voice or any like sex
(34:53):
in the city jokes you have tucked up in your
brain or whatever. And so in that regard, you know,
some women might just opt to you right for other shows, sitcoms,
et cetera. Although based on what Nell Scobell was writing
about in that Vanity Fair piece, once you're finally getting
down to writing and comedy, it's almost as though she
(35:13):
she feels like gender should just fly out the window
because there's this thing um where one one thing she
noticed in writer's rooms, like this hesitation of women even
being in the room. Is this idea that well, then
you're gonna have to tone it down. Then you can't
make inappropriate jokes that frankly, Caroline and I can't make
right now on the podcast to give you examples to
(35:36):
which Scobell says, No, you don't have to be less
body if a woman is in the room, you can
be equally funny. You know, we can all be equally
gross and funny if we want to be. Yeah, she
was saying, we're your co worker and we're your comedy
writing coworker. At that we're not your wife, we're not
your mother, we're not your daughter. We're on a level
(35:58):
playing field, Like, don't feel like you can't cut loose
just because of vaginas in the room. So, speaking of Scobel,
who also in addition to Liz Winstead, has a very
active and funny Twitter account. If you want to follow her. Uh.
She put her words into action when it came to
the recent launch of John Oliver's late night show last
(36:20):
week tonight over at hbo UM. John Oliver actually talked
about in an interview how when they were looking for writers,
and Scobell specifically did something a little unconventional. She sought
out people online and magazines anywhere she thought funny women
would be writing and reached out to them directly. Yeah,
(36:43):
basically reached out to them directly and said, come come
working late night, add your voices to the cacophony. You
are needed. Yeah, and I don't. I think they have
two writers, two female writers, which that's not massive, but
it's still a presence. And I want to say that
there showrunner is also a woman. And I have it
(37:07):
on good authority that John Oliver is a fantastic boss
to work for as a lady comedian. And same thing
too with John Stewart, which made me very happy. That
makes me happy to Yeah, I'm glad to know that
my random, based on nothing assumptions about them are are accurate. Yeah.
When it comes though to a more historic writer's room
(37:30):
in late night seth Myers has an astonishing three women
writing for him, including Amber Ruffin, who is the first
black female writer in late night history. That's great. I mean,
didn't he do like a blind submission thing where he
was just like, give me the jokes and all. He
ended up getting a diverse writing group because of that.
(37:51):
It might have been him. I know that John Oliver
also did a blind submission, and I think for the
first round with packets, it is become being far more common,
if not the thing to do where you have blind
readings of the jokes so that you don't go see
a name like, oh, these jokes are from a girl
named Kristen, throw them away. They're going to be about
(38:14):
tampons um. But speaking of jokes, So, like everything that
Chris and I have been talking about right now, seems
like things are on the up swing. It seems like
the younger hosts who have the younger demographics watching them,
maybe it's more hopeful. Maybe maybe more women will will
stop up to bat and that includes not only behind
the scenes in the writer's room, but also in terms
(38:36):
of actual comedians, stand up comedians who get invited on
to perform. It's actually still pretty grim. Yeah, there aren't
that many women who go on late night shows to
do stand up, whether that's stand up actually on the
show that you would see on TV, or doing stand
up to warm up the audience. In two thousand twelve,
(38:56):
for instance, Uh, there were forty nine stand up performances
on The Late Late Show, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel, Live, Conan,
and The Late Show. And of those forty nine performances,
there were thirty eight white men, nine men of color,
and two women. Go gals. Yeah, but then last year
(39:20):
in a partner Nanturla became the first Indian woman to
perform stand up on US late night TV on Conan
and Kristen and I can say that we knew her
when well, we saw our performance stand up at a
conference we went to. Yeah we laughed at her jokes.
Yeah we didn't. We don't. Like we're not friends, but
we could be. She wants to be, and she's super funny.
(39:41):
Yet again, follow her Twitter to follow all these people's twitters.
But the question again is does it really matter because
we're talking about younger hosts. It is a new generation
of late night we have. You know, it seems like
there's a sea change going on. But you and I
(40:02):
don't watch late night when it comes on late night.
I think a lot of people watching might consume late
night television most often in the form of viral videos. Yeah.
That's one big way that Kimmel in particular and Fallon
have really found their niche is by producing these segments
(40:22):
that go bananas on Twitter and YouTube. Yeah, They're like
skits and things like that with guests that are easily
break down able and digestible. Like I had a friend
grabby and be like, you have to watch this, it's
so funny on Fallon And I mean it was funny, um,
but that doesn't mean I want to sit down and
watch the entire show. I'm just gonna watch this video
you sent me, exactly. And viewership has been declining for
(40:43):
late night steadily for years now. This was reported on
in Vanity Fair and they noted that, as we mentioned
earlier in the show, when Carson was on, he was
attracting fifteen million viewers a night, and then Leno in
the same time slot was only six million viewers, And
now Fallon has about one point eight million viewers a night,
(41:06):
which is significant because Jimmy Fallon on Twitter has eleven
million followers. Yeah, I mean you also have to think
too that, like, well, what else do people have to
watch when Johnny Carson was on, Yeah, that's true, exactly
did not have the YouTube's they did not well. So,
I mean the whole argument behind this, though, is that
(41:26):
these declining ratings don't necessarily matter as much because everybody's
watching everything on the internet. Like Conan. Somebody was talking
to Conan about how his ratings once he went to TBS,
We're basically cut in half after two weeks, and he's like,
I'm fine, I'm happy here, Like things are going great.
Everybody's watching me on their DVR the next day. I'm
(41:47):
fine with it. Yeah, And I mean even the basic
business model of late night television is downsizing and digitizing,
because this used to be a one million dollar per
we operation for a top tier show, but that kind
of money is crazy to spend these days. I mean,
obviously there's still a lot of cash it goes into
(42:11):
production for the big shows, but a lot of this
is still scaling down because the audiences are scaling down
and also getting older. They're getting older that Taco Bell demographic. Yeah,
they're not watching They're they're probably not watching late night television. Yeah,
Conan reels in the youngest median audience at thirty two,
(42:34):
whereas Letterman and Leno's median viewers were aged fifty six. Yeah,
and I wonder if that has gone down at all
with say, Jimmy Fallon taking on over for Leno, and
maybe if it will go down if you know, Colbert
brings his younger audience over when he moves to Letterman.
But fifties six, yawsa, that's that's that's that's older, that
(42:58):
is older age. But Amanda Hess is like, I don't care.
I don't care. Let them have it, let them eat cake,
Let them eat white old cake if they want to.
She said that late night talk shows are celebrity self
promotion vehicles, packaged with broad, sanitized humor that is highly
topical but rarely actually relevant. She basically talks about how
(43:21):
the humor is so broad that it's like, okay, kind
of funny, but it's really like not striking anyone's funny
bone to any sort of extreme yeah, because they have
to keep it super sanitized. And she was writing about
this over at Slate and went on to talk about
how if you want, you know, women in comedy, don't
(43:41):
put them behind the desk on late night and cramp
their style. Instead, we have things like Inside Amy Shumor,
Parks and Wreck and broad City that are making ladies laugh,
Ladies making ladies laugh. Now, Parks and Wreck is still
pretty ame because it's on Network, But for Inside, Ami
(44:01):
Schumer on Comedy Central and broad City on FX, I
mean they get downright body, Yeah, I mean Amanda has
has a point like who cares let them have it?
It's stupid, it's a dying medium or whatever. But you know,
a lot of it goes back to what we talked
about all the way back with Carson that you know
a lot of these late night hosts are gatekeepers for
(44:23):
not what's funny, but the funny that people recognize. So
the fact that so many of these comedians who come
on board, or the writers who are in the writer's room,
the fact that so many of them are still mail,
means that there are a lot of funny perspectives out
there that just aren't getting hurt. Well. I wonder if
there are any comedians listening. I would be curious from
(44:45):
an insider perspective, whether it would be even more important though,
to focus on diversifying those writer's rooms, because again, when
it comes to what those hosts are even going to
be spouting out to begin with, that is the product.
So I mean, obviously their delivery and some of their
you know, their comedic instincts as well, but by and
(45:09):
large their jokes written by their writers. So if you
diversify the writers, then you diversify what's on screen. And
I think they were. I mean, I I do think
that the comedy we're seeing coming out of the shows
hosted by you know, Kimmel, Fallon, Myers, etcetera, these younger
guys is fresher than what you would see on Leno
(45:30):
of the past and Letterman soon to be of the past.
But there's still progress to be made. So I want
predictions from folks of who will be the first female
late night host because at some point, if only, if
only to get the ratings boost that would happen, at
least for the beginning, a network is going to do it.
(45:54):
It will happen, But who's it going to be? Who
wants it? I wonder if these like, you know, I
wonder if Tina Fey really wants it. I doubt she does.
She can do anything she wants. I don't know. Maybe
Ellen does. If Ellen already has the daytime talk show,
but she's got I mean, but she has the daytime
show on lock she does have a huge audience. Yeah,
why would she leap over? I don't know. Now I'm
(46:15):
trying to get into the head of Ellen, which means
it's time for us to wrap up the show. So
and and yes, if there are any comedy writers or
comedians listening, definitely want to hear from you, any late
night fans. Let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is where you can send
us your letters. You can also tweet us at Mom's
(46:35):
Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook. And
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. Okay, Well, Kristen and I received a couple
of letters that we're going to share about our fraternity's episode,
and I have one here from a woman who would
like to remain anonymous. She says, thanks for the recent
(46:58):
story about fraternity's I was not involved in a Greek system,
but I'm now friends with guys who were in a
fraternity together. These men are not animal house stereotypes. They
are business owners and successful professionals. They are loving husbands
and fathers. They have vegetable gardens and volunteer in their
spare time. They are kind and generous men, and they
all have serious problems with alcohol. Drinking heavily was central
(47:21):
to how they form their friendships, and it continues to
be key to how they relate to each other. Abstaining
from drinking when they're together is like joining a game
of basketball and then sitting in the bleachers. Everyone stares
and wants to know what's wrong. When one of the
group tries to go sober or at least significantly cut back,
the others pulling back in telling him You're so much
more fun when you drink, or I'm so glad you're
(47:41):
drinking again. These men do sincerely care about each other.
For them, quitting drinking doesn't just mean giving up alcohol.
It means distancing themselves from guys who have been their
best friends for almost fifteen years. I can't imagine what
it would take to change the drinking culture within college fraternities,
but I wish the national organizations would do something to
help the thousands of guys who carry that culture with
(48:03):
them after they graduate. So I've got a letter here
from a guy also about our fraternity podcast, you would
also like to remain anonymous. And he has lots of
experience in fraternities because he has in fact served as
president of his fraternity at a large school. So he
(48:24):
he went through a lot of the different topics that
we touched on, and I can't read the entire letter,
but I do want to call out a few things
that he uh talked about. So he said, drinking, Yes,
we drink a lot, some more than others. There is
a saying that the only reason sororities don't care that
they are dry is because they can come and drink
for free at our houses. When it comes to hazing,
(48:47):
we don't haze. But then again everyone says that. I
will say that physical hazing has been replaced with psychological hazing,
typically with events that are designed to mentally stress the
new members in hopes that they shared dure us helps
the new members bond as pledge class. On the occasion
that there is an incident a k a. Someone screws up,
gets hurt, or someone gets caught hazing, charges are dropped
(49:10):
and honestly they should just be labeled assault and battery.
And then when it comes to sexual assault, he says,
we hate it as much as anyone and personally, nothing
makes my blood boil more. We especially hate the people
who take advantage of intoxicated women. To say it doesn't
happen is naive, but it's something that we as a
(49:31):
community you need to work on, and not just the
Greek community either. Just a final note, typically, yes, there
is one bad egg. Every house has that one insert
your favorite expletive who screws everything up for everyone. Everyone
I know says that joining a fraternity is the best
decision they made in college. The only complaint I have
is this habit of the media has to only report
(49:52):
on the problems with fraternity life and to answer your questions.
The main reasons guys typically don't stop other guys from
being quote bad apples is because they are your brother.
There is always a hierarchy within the fraternity, and typically
when you've been involved in the fraternity for a lesser
period of time, you feel less powerful. Something all new
members fail to recognize is that as the people with
(50:13):
the longest time left in the fraternity, you have the
most power to change the house for the better. My
house actually kicked out all of our quote bad apples,
A few years ago, and while money has been tightened
the meantime, we have never been happier as a house.
Members need to seize an active role in their fraternity
and decide to make it where they want it to be.
Fraternity life shouldn't be a lifestyle you join. It should
(50:33):
be a lifestyle you create for yourself and for your brothers. Yes,
you do join a house for the values they hold
and ideally your health to those values, and that is hard,
but the hard choices are the ones that typically need
to be made. If fraternity has focused more on recruiting
the best men they can, all of this would be avoided. Realistically,
there will always be that one fraternity that has all
the bad apples no one else wanted. Avoid them, don't
(50:56):
go to their parties, don't go to their events, don't
encourage your behavior, and they will hopefully go away. Forgive
me if I was a little ranty, but for dirty
life is something I highly value and hope that it
will continue well into the future. And that's not ranty
at all. As I actually wrote back to this fellow
of thanking him for his insight because that's exactly what
(51:16):
we asked for. So thank you to him and everybody
else who has written into us. Mom. Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address and for
links to all of our social media's as well as
all of our podcast blogs and videos, which if you
look in our videos and go to how to Talk
to Boys, it has featured a woman who has written
(51:40):
for Jimmy Salm, So if you want to see a
lady late night writer in action, head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
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