Story highlights As a black man, Gene Seymour thrilled Trevor Noah tapped for "Daily Show." But in service of fair play he asks: Why not a woman for the job?

Jessica Williams, Samantha Bee would have been good candidates. When will women finally get their shot at late night?

Gene Seymour is a film critic who has written about music, movies and culture for The New York Times, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) As a person-of-color, African-American, veteran minority journalist and longtime enthusiast of all things "Daily Show," I am of course as happy, proud and thrilled as the wife of a successful Apollo astronaut over the impending ascension of Trevor Noah, the biracial comedian from South Africa, to Jon Stewart's anchor chair on what's believed by many to be the most trusted half-hour of news and information in America.

As a person who believes in fair play and equal opportunity for all, I am also moved to wonder when a woman will get the chance to preside over a talk show after sunset?

Gene Seymour

Look. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. After generations of near-to-total invisibility on mass media airwaves, it's bracing to find a whole one-hour block of high-profile cable television infotainment anchored by men who look like me.

Indeed, in pushing forth both Noah and Larry Wilmore, the writer, comic and erstwhile National Black Correspondent for "The Daily Show," to preside over both halves of Comedy Central's much-coveted 11 p.m.-to-midnight bloc, Stewart is acknowledging what the mainstream of the country truly is: i.e. not as pale-faced as it once thought it was.

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And so far, Wilmore's "The Nightly Show," which premiered earlier this year as a replacement for the very different "Daily Show" companion once hosted by Stephen Colbert, is gradually establishing its own identity as an equally cheeky hybrid of sketch satire and celebrity forum with its own multicultural flavor.