Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman regrets his harsh assessments back when of Katie Couric’s first night anchoring The CBS Evening News and Jimmy Kimmel’s first weeks as a late-night host. To make up for it, I guess, he’s asking “the media” to “cut some slack to” Jimmy Fallon when he replaces Conan O’Brien next month on NBC because “snap judgments on television debuts aren’t always reliable.”
Writes Friedman:
Professional and amateur critics will be lying in wait for the 34-year-old Fallon…For a lot of people, it’s much more fun to blast the subjects for everything from their content and delivery to their attitude and wardrobe.
Is it fair? No way. Is it inevitable in this digital age? Of course, it is. And the critics will make their judgments on day one…
…if not before, right here, right now, in response to Friedman’s own “MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: Will Jimmy Fallon thrive or flop in his new role?”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.