Larry Wilmore taking Colbert’s timeslot with The Minority Report

Woo-hoo! Comedy Central has just announced that The Daily Show’s “Senior Black Correspondent,” Larry Wilmore, will debut a new show next January in the 11:30pm, Monday through Thursday timeslot being abandoned by Stephen Colbert. The show will be called The Minority Report. Via The New York Times:

The idea for “The Minority Report with Larry Wilmore,” as the show will be known, came from Mr. Stewart himself, who proposed that the 11:30 p.m. time period behind his nightly “Daily Show” was the ideal place for a new format, one that would “provide an opportunity for the underrepresented voices out there,” as Michele Ganeless, the president of Comedy Central said in an interview.

The idea is to have a panel of those voices led by Mr. Wilmore, commenting on the issues of the day — but in a comedic, scripted format, Ms. Ganeless said. “We are so excited to have a fresh idea for late night.” She emphasized that the panel would not simply address minority issues, but any and all issues, except from minority points of view.

This is very cool. Late night will still be a sausage fest, but at least it won’t be all white. I’m tempted to say that it’s a little bit of a shame that Wilmore isn’t taking on a colorblind hosting role, but the fact that this will be an overtly comedic takedown of the dominance of the white male POV in our culture might mean this has an even greater impact on countering that wall of white maleness.

The only bad thing for Wilmore: he will be on opposite Stephen Colbert’s new job on The Late Show. Hopefully Comedy Central will get better about counting viewers who watch full episodes online.