Controversial television star Megyn Kelly made a huge splash last year when she left Fox News for a $20 million contract with NBC — but viewers haven’t followed.
NBC News’ Sunday night program, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, was unceremoniously cancelled this summer after a ratings disaster during it’s initial run.
Kelly’s program was repeatedly losing to reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos and other decades-old television programs, and her failure to produce caused NBC executives to pull the plug on Kelly prematurely.
Determined to make good on their $20 million investment, NBC has announced Kelly is returning for a new morning show that will focus on “empowering people” instead of politics.
While promoting the new show this week, though, Kelly let slip a hint that things aren’t so great.
She complained that things had been rough for her. “It is true that the past couple of years have not been fun for me professionally. I mean, they’ve been challenging and they’ve been a growth opportunity, but they were not fun,” Kelly told Chicago’s NBC affiliate WMAQ-Ch. 5.
“It’s not reasonable to expect in any profession you’re going to have a dandy time every day and every month. But when it’s systemic and it goes on and on and on and on, you do have to do an honest re-evaluation,” Kelly said about her stalled career.
That would be considered a fair and honest assessment of failure — a harsh truth every American faces at one point.
Except Kelly did a complete 180-degree shift — and claimed it wasn’t her that caused Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly to bomb.
“I thought the ratings were fine,” Kelly said regarding her abruptly cancelled show.
“You know, we didn’t expect to beat ‘60 Minutes,’ but our average for the summer was actually quite solid,” Kelly said, and said her bosses agreed — even though they cancelled her show!
Kelly’s new show is a live audience broadcast focused on feeling good and emotional growth — not the hard hitting news or political talk that made her famous.
Indeed, NBC is keeping her surprisingly far from the network’s Today show brand, despite paying her millions of dollars a year to co-host.
It seems Kelly doesn’t think her ratings are the problem?
Perhaps it’s time she follows her own advice and has an “honest re-evaluation” of where her career is heading — straight down the drain.
— The Horn editorial team