“Megyn Kelly Today is not returning,” NBC News said in a statement. The fourth hour of NBC’s venerable Today franchise that Kelly’s show occupied will be hosted by other co-anchors from the show beginning next week, the network said. NBC didn’t address the status of Kelly herself, who reports said was negotiating over her multimillion-dollar contract.
It’s increasingly unlikely that she could make a return to the news division.
Megyn Kelly’s 9 a.m. Today show hour has been canceled, multiple sources confirm. The news comes just 48 hours after she received immense backlash for her controversial remarks about blackface earlier this week. “They’re contacting the staff and reassigning everyone today. Everyone’s being told that they still have a home here, but it won’t be on Megyn’s show,” one source says.
Megyn Kelly is expected to wind down her 9 a.m. Today show hour by the end of the season, according to a source close to the situation. Sources say that Kelly has met with network executives in recent weeks to discuss the future of the show and expressed a desire to cover more news and politics.
Van Barnes, former assistant of Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor, appeared on Wednesday’s edition of NBC’s Megyn Kelly Today to detail the sexual harassment allegations she has leveled against the actor.
Exclusives
Giving NBC’s morning audience a glimpse of her Fox News persona, Kelly said Fonda “has no business lecturing anyone on what qualifies as offensive.”
Megyn Kelly Today is facing claims it is a “completely toxic” environment where staff including young female assistants are ‘abused and harassed’ by executives who ‘scapegoat’ and launch f-word tirades according to an email by Kevin Bleyer.
As the country grapples with a national reckoning over sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men, three women who accused the most high-profile man in America again questioned Monday — on Megyn Kelly Today — why their claims did nothing to stop him from winning the presidency.
Sexual harassment stories put her back in fierce mode. Kelly said she envisioned a show that would resemble a mimosa because of its “effervescence,” but her recent monologues have been anything but bubbly. They also have been her best-reviewed work since she left a primetime slot on Fox News at the beginning of the year.
In addition to widespread criticism and sluggish ratings, Megyn Kelly is facing another impending crisis. After three weeks on TV, celebrities aren’t rushing to sit down with her. A number of publicists expressed discomfort with the idea of booking their clients in the third hour of Today, which has now been retitled Megyn Kelly Today. These publicists, however, said they are still eager to take their talent to other blocs of the morning show.
Megyn Kelly is raking in $23 million a year for her new NBC morning show and is locked in for the next three years.
It was a tough week for Kelly in the trade press, and at the end of Friday morning’s show, she poked some fun at the tepid media industry response. “I just want to take a moment to thank all of you so much for watching this week,” Kelly told her live studio audience. “It’s been very exciting. It has been educational.” She then made a joke: “I’ve just been so delighted at the media response. What? No.”
The Morning Politics Of ‘Megyn Kelly Today’
As the first episode revealed, NBC has misread not only Kelly’s talents but also the changing nature of our cultural wars.
The new hour of Today dipped to a 1.9/7 on day two of head-to-head competition against the syndicated veteran in metered markets.
The former Fox News anchor vowed to put aside the hard-edged interviewing style that made her famous and turned her energy Monday full-bore into the launch of a new morning program. Kelly told a live studio audience in the opening moments of her new Megyn Kelly Today that “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” and said she hoped instead to help viewers “get yourself through the day, to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear — and maybe a little hope to start your day. Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing.”
Here’s one more lead-up piece to Megyn Kelly’s Today debut on Monday, once again laying out what’s riding on the $17 million star new morning hour. The highlights? Kelly doesn’t care much about the skepticism around her show (little surprise), the program aims to be “fun and uplifting and empowering” (not what she’s known for) and her M.O. will be “I’m just sharing more of who I am” (and who is that again?).
A salvo of promotions for the forthcoming “Megyn Kelly Today” on NBC aren’t focusing on the hard-edged reporting style that helped make her name. Rather, spots and billboards have her shaking hands, holding up coffee and gushing about her fondness for the film “Overboard.” all part of an effort to emphasize the softer side of the network’s reported $17 million bet on the former Fox anchor.
Megyn Kelly’s upcoming morning program will be called Megyn Kelly Today. The title was to be unveiled at NBC internal meetings Thursday, sources said.
