NBC is already in “total panic” before Megyn Kelly’s morning show debuts on September 25th. This is not good. Not good at all.
Daily Beast reports:
Yet, according to network insiders, her new role is prompting “questions internally about who her audience is exactly” as well as a sense of “total panic” concerning the intense media scrutiny that will unavoidably attend the launch of Megyn Kelly Today, to say nothing of the need to publicly vindicate NBC News Chairman Andy Lack’s $17 million gamble (reportedly her eye-popping annual compensation) when he wooed her away from Fox.
It was not a good omen for Kelly’s daytime prospects when Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly posted disappointing numbers, was reportedly pulled from its limited summer run July 30 two episodes short of the expected 10, and attracted unwelcome controversy with the Alex Jones segment, notably protests from the relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims (including 20 young children killed in a mass shooting that Jones had called a hoax).
“The Sunday show laid such an egg that any claims that she had automatic star power, to get people in the door to see what she was doing, have been disavowed,” television news analyst Andrew Tyndall told The Daily Beast. “The stardom of the celebrity anchor was a phenomenon of the 1980s back when [flamboyant ABC News president] Roone Arledge was around. In this day and age, the shows make the anchors, not the other way around.”
It’s been an utter disaster for Megyn Kelly since kicking things off at NBC. The New York Post reports Kelly’s Sunday show has been pulled two episodes sooner than scheduled due to poor ratings. Ouch.
Breitbart News reports:
Last week, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly set another viewership low with just 2.71 million total viewers. In the last three weeks, her show has failed to beat the years-old Dateline rerun the network ran in her show’s time slot when Kelly took a week off during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
According to the New York Post, “Kelly’s ratings-challenged Sunday show was announced as a limited” run that would return after the football season. The network was reportedly angling for at least ten episodes but apparently decided to end Kelly’s misery after eight episodes as Kelly’s downward spiral in the ratings did not stop.
An NBC spinmeister claimed that Kelly’s show was going off the air after this week’s show because she needs to be “freed up to focus” on her morning show. Translation: Kelly needs to do all she can to not ruin NBC’s crown jewel Today franchise. Network executives, who reportedly have been freaking out about Kelly’s poor ratings, are probably praying that Kelly simply does no more harm than she has already done in her short time at the network.
Television executives have reportedly wondered whether Kelly Sunday show, which seems to have highlighted her numerous substantive and stylistic flaws, will even return at all.
As TGP previously reported, things are not going well for Megyn Kelly. The NBC host’s show “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” reported low ratings in mid-July.
It looks like Megyn Kelly just can’t catch a break as a new report reveals that her Sunday show’s ratings continue to plummet. Re-runs of America’s Funniest Home Videos are getting more viewers-OUCH!
Breitbart News reported:
Because of NASCAR’s rain-delayed and caution-filled Brickyard 400 race on Sunday, Kelly’s show aired at 9 p.m instead of 7 p.m. But she could not hold some of NASCAR’s audience, as Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly got just 2.71 million total viewers, down from her previous low of 3.1 million total viewers last week, according to Nielsen data.
She slightly improved in the 18-49 demo, getting a .5 rating compared to her .4 rating the previous two weeks. But, as Breitbart News has noted, absence did not make the heart grow fonder for Kelly.
Kelly took a week off during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and she has failed to beat the years-old Dateline rerun that ran that weekend in total viewers and the key demo since her return. That years-old Dateline rerun got 3.73 million total viewers and a .5 rating in the key demo.
Since Kelly’s return, she has gotten 3.21 million total viewers, followed by 3.1 million total viewers, followed by 2.71 million total viewers. Though her show aired two hours later this week, it again got fewer viewers than reruns of 60 Minutes and America’s Funniest Home Videos.
