After seeing most of the "test" hosts, none of them come close to capturing the charisma that Alex Trebek had. I wish I could put my finger on it, but what was it about Alex that makes his shoes so hard to fill? Ken Jennings acted like announcing the clues had to be done as fast as possible. The other subs have been no better. So I went and dug up the video of Alex's first show. It also seemed rapid and chaotic. His debut was far from the host that endeared him to his audience many years later.
After many years he grew into the host we miss so much today. Maybe we need to lower our expectations on the first impressions of Alex's replacement and try to see which of them will grow best into the role. Crossing my fingers.
Here's a list of the future try-outs:
Buzzy Cohen: May 17-28
Mayim Bialik: May 31-June 11
Savannah Guthrie: June 14-25
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: June 28-July 9
--- below are just one-week tryouts
George Stephanopoulos: July 12-16
Robin Roberts: July 19-23
LeVar Burton: July 26-30
David Faber: Aug. 2-6
Joe Buck: Aug. 9-13
That list still lacks a lot of imagination, but I have always been a big fan of Robin Roberts so I will be interested to see how she does. I'm hoping she has a good showing. And LeVar Burton finally gets his shot. I hope he does well as his supporters have been quite adamant. The rest are more network talking heads.
It’s kinda not fair judging the tryouts vs ‘having done it many decades’ trebek
It’s the same issue we’re going to have evaluating QBs the next few years - they’re going to be compared to a HoF qb- no one is going to benefit from that comparison