Relationships Talk

Megyn Kelly’s elopement with NBC was a marriage that almost nobody wanted to see work.

Her new colleagues at the network resented the $20 million annual salary she reportedly collected upon arriving at the network in 2017. Today show veterans viewed her new show, Megyn Kelly Today as an interloper that succeeded only in garnering worse ratings than an existing show in the Today franchise (Today’s Take) in the network’s line-up. Liberals and centrists found outrage in a conservative media star from the Fox News Channel being rewarded with a prestigious broadcast slot. Many fans of her old Fox show wished her ill for having so aggressively questioned Donald Trump in a Republican presidential debate, and some of her Fox colleagues had it in for her for turning against Fox News founder Roger Ailes, the man who made her a star, in her memoir.

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The only person Kelly had in her corner was Andrew Lack, the NBC news division chairman who hired her. But after committing her “blackface“ gaffe this week, Lack’s support wasn’t enough, and the Kelly-haters have gotten their wish. Even though Kelly apologized on air—she seemed close to tears and the audience gave her a standing ovation—the network has killed her show. “Megyn Kelly Today is not returning,” an NBC spokesperson told USA Today on Friday. “Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other Today co-anchors.”

That Kelly’s morning show was doomed from the start should have been obvious. The successful morning shows have long depended on female hosts who know how to play the role of America’s sweetheart. But Kelly’s journalistic strengths—she can be a tough interviewer—did not stretch in that direction. Her iciness, which often worked to her advantage in night-time performances in front of a conservative audience, chilled morning audiences as viewers saw through her attempts to warm or soften her image. Beyond the blackface remarks, Kelly’s miscues weren’t that egregious by contemporary standards—the biggest rap against her was that she offended Debra Messing and Jane Fonda with her bluntness. (Apparently, it’s not considered courageous journalism to ask about a woman’s plastic surgery.) Had a Regis Philbin or a Kelly Ripa done the same, they could have drawn on the goodwill of their audience to tide them over. Flailing in the ratings, Kelly had no such reserve on which to draw and paid the price.

Could it have worked out differently? Perhaps NBC didn’t take into account that the majority of the morning audience had only a vague idea who Kelly was when the network injected her in their morning routine. Perhaps if it had given her a softer landing by first assigning her guest slots on the regular Today show and dispatching her to other news programs, the network could have acclimated viewers to her relative brittleness. When NBC signed Kelly, its seemed like that was the plan. It fashioned a starring role for her—a Sunday magazine to call her own and a place in election coverage and other news programming. But the magazine flopped and Kelly failed to make much of a mark in the network’s news line-up. The only consistent item in Lack’s a-star-is-reborn rollout was the morning show, and that wasn’t enough.

Kelly’s failure was not entirely her fault. The news networks have a long history of raiding their competitors for talent and attempting to turn the raided talent into bigger stars. CBS News stole Katie Couric from Today and tried to turn her into an evening anchor. ABC News stole Barbara Walters from Today and Harry Reasoner from CBS News and tried to turn them into an evening anchor team. They all failed—if by failed you mean did not set their network’s ratings on fire.

TV star power is a delicate thing and cannot easily be transplanted, as I wrote in 2017. Couric, Meredith Vieira, Jane Pauley (another one-time Today star) and Anderson Cooper—all genuine TV royalty—bombed when they attempted to move their personas into a daytime TV slot, or in Pauley’s case, a different daytime slot. For reasons of personality or familiarity, audiences did not take to them. One advantage they had over Kelly was that their shows were not so intensely hyped, so their cancellation got little notice outside the industry.

Can Kelly’s career come back from her brainless blackface comment? As MSNBC Joy Reid learned after her old homophobic blog posts were uncovered, TV fans can be a forgiving lot. Whether NBC can forgive her is another matter. If Kelly seeks steady work, all she needs to do is find a way to reconnect with her old night-time audience that doesn’t demand sincere smiles from its hosts. But seeing as that old audience belongs to Fox and she burned that bridge, that’s not an option. Kelly’s best hope is that Sinclair Broadcast Group finally gets it act together and starts competing in earnest with Fox. Faster than you can sing “Together Again,” Sinclair could rebottle that old magic by hiring Kelly and fellow Fox veterans Bill O’Reilly and Greta Van Susteren.

Crazier things have happened.

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Where should Kelly go? Send ideas via email mail to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts want a cooking show. My Twitter feed seeks a role as the host of Firing Line after the current and second host flames out. My RSS feed refuses to go on TV.