Where Are All the Female Hosts on TV on New Year's Eve?

Why have all the big-name TV hosts on New Year's Eve traditionally been male? Every year as I click through the channels I can't help but notice that women are conspicuously absent except as musical guests, reporters on location, or arm candy-styled sidekicks.

I can't recall any of these forgettable females, but I can name the men we've seen year after year after year.

In our grandparents' heyday it was Guy Lombardo. Then Dick Clark stepped in in 1972 and for decades seemed ageless; only after his 2004 stroke did USA Today downgrade him to 'the father figure of New Year's Eve.' Now Ryan Seacrest (who's been hosting alongside Clark for the past 3 years) has risen through the ranks to have his name officially added to "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest."

At NBC, Carson Daly is a fixture after five years of hosting. At CNN, Anderson Cooper has been inexplicably paired with Kathy Griffin. (Whoever set that one up clearly isn't a professional matchmaker.)

Only MTV is pushing the envelope and going with a solo female host -- Miley Cyrus -- assisted by co-hosts The Veronicas.

So where's 'the mother figure of New Year's Eve?' If she's anything like me, she's driving around town in the early evening taking her teenagers from one party to another. Then she's fixing snacks and getting drinks and hanging out at home, watching the ball drop in Times Square in her jammies. She's staying up until 1 or 2 to pick up the kids after their parties are over; wearing a long down-filled coat and a pair of Sorel boots, she heads out bleary-eyed into the snowy, frigid night to operate Mom's On-Demand Taxi Service.

Don't we deserve something more?

New Year's Eve used to be associated with the images of an old man with an hourglass and a baby with a top hat. The old man was Father Time, representing the old year drawing to a close. The baby with the top hat was the new year, wearing a sash emblazoned with the year's numerals.

Why not update that image and work a woman in somehow, perhaps starting with the name Eve? New Year's Eve would be a depiction of the first woman -- or Everywoman -- being reborn in the new year; she'd be lush and ripe with possibility and change and hope. Maybe the New Year's Eve female figure -- like her male counterpart -- could wear a sash, except that hers would read "HOPE."

It's not that farfetched. How many TV commercials have you seen in the weeks leading up to tonight that have advertised weight loss programs, health club memberships, smoking cessation hotlines, or any of a number of other businesses built on change? Change is rooted in hope, in the belief that we can be different and evolve into a better version of ourselves in the new year.

My hope in 2009 is that next year at this time a capable woman will be hosting a New Year's Eve program. If a woman can run for president and vice president in 2008, is that too much to ask?