Former Fox News mainstay Megyn Kelly is closing in on the end of her summer tryout at NBC News, with this weekend to wrap the initial eight-episode run for “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.” The show concludes its initial run with a Ricky Gervais interview — not quite the buzz generator that launched the show, when Kelly sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The AP notes that audiences are taking a “wait and see” approach to Kelly’s NBC career as they await the Sept. 25 premiere of her one-hour weekday morning show.
“Kelly’s show isn’t as popular as its predecessor in the time slot, ‘Dateline NBC,’ and lost viewers each week,” the AP reports. “But many shows are seeing audience declines, including direct competitor ’60 Minutes.’ NBC says it is proud of the range and ability Kelly showed with her interviews.”
Kelly’s Sunday show will be giving way for the time being to NFL coverage and, later, the 2018 Winter Olympics before settling back in for a regular run in early 2018.
Her NBC career is dead…. put a fork in it…
Affiliates will revolt against her planned daytime morning show and plug in syndicated programming that will generate more ad dollars.
Other than “Dateline NBC”, NBC has a long history of news magazine flops dating back to the 1960s or 1970s. Why would “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” be any different than the dozens of previous magazines that have flopped on NBC? Who’s bright idea was it to air this show against “60 Minutes”?
The one notable segment (that was actually worth watching), was the June 25 segment on the wide-spread health care fraud occurring at many rehab facilities across the country, driving up the cost of health care–and health care insurance, while scamming the federal government and harming patients. Megyn Kelly would have more viewers, if she had more segments like this that people actually wanted to watch.
When you are on the highest rated news network and surrounded by other popular shows you support each other and all can have strong ratings. In this situation she is somewhat out on an island. It makes it tough. Being up against a legendary show like 60 Minutes makes it even tougher. Add in that she isn’t a brand name outside of Fox and she has long uphill climb.