Former Fox News reporter and Donald Trump critic Megyn Kelly secured a big money move to NBC News this year. She was given a newsmagazine show on Sunday night and she was expected to be one of the network’s big stars.
Unfortunately for Megyn Kelly, it’s not working as planned. Her show, “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” has hit record low ratings in its fourth week on air. It received a 0.4 rating and 3.4 million viewers according to Variety Magazine. The show was crushed in the same timeslot by a partial rerun of CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “60 Minutes” received a 0.7 rating and 7.2 million viewers.
Kelly’s show couldn’t even beat a rerun of ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. That show received a 0.7 rating and 3.9 million viewers. But don’t feel too sorry for Kelly, she did manage to beat Fox’s Sunday night reruns.
Kelly was looking for a ratings boost from last week’s show, which featured InfoWars founder Alex Jones. That interview only generated a 0.5 rating and 3.6 million viewers.
The Kelly interview of Jones received bad reviews, as did one of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But mediocre to terrible interviews of controversial people are not Kelly’s biggest problem. Her biggest problem is that she doesn’t have a large fan base.
“To the political Left, she will always be the Queen of Fox News. To the political Right, she will always be the Betrayer, the woman who, at first opportunity, stabbed her Fox News fans in the back as a means to leave in the dust those who had stuck by her and helped make her famous.
To both she is seen as a mercenary willing to be whoever she needs to be in order to make it up the next rung of success.” wrote John Nolte at Daily Wire.
Megyn Kelly burned her conservative Fox News audience in two ways. First, she used her platform there to establish herself as one of the most prominent “Never Trumpers” in the media. Secondly, she jumped ship at the first opportunity to enhance her career.
Even worse for Kelly, she has proven that she does not have the gravitas for this type of job. Her and NBC’s hatchet job on Alex Jones played right into Jones’s hands. Meanwhile, her interview with Putin didn’t deliver any real news.
Megyn Kelly forgot one of the basic rules of success, “don’t forget to dance with those who brought you.” She is now paying the price for abandoning her viewers.
