On Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert will do his first show as host of "The Late Show" on CBS.
By Wednesday morning, there will be a pack of media (and social media) hounds baying that the Emmy-nominated host jumped the shark and that he'll never be as good as he was on Comedy Central (or on "Strangers With Candy" or "Exit 57," depending on how contrary they want to be).
The thing is, it takes shows -- and their hosts -- time to hit their stride. And yet, we want them to be instantly classic.
Conan O'Brien was making fun of such instant judgments back in 1993, when he opened his first show as "Late Night" host by preparing to hang himself. In real life, NBC was so nervous and impatient that the network gave O'Brien a series of 13-week contracts.
And yet there came a time when O'Brien -- who now plies his trade on TBS, like CNN a unit of Time Warner -- came to be a treasured part of the late-night landscape, with his fans eagerly awaiting the next episode and even non-fans acknowledging his impact.
When does that happen? Sometimes it takes years; in recent times, when social media accelerates everything, it may happen in a matter of months.