Recently, Michael Wolff described Megyn Kelly as a real-life Eve Harrington, the conniving, manipulative, social-climbing star of All About Eve. At the end of his article, he warned NBC’s Today host, Savannah Guthrie, to “watch out.” Today, NBC announced it will cancel the third hour of "Today" to make room for Kelly. According to the New York Post, Guthrie and her coworkers are not taking it well.
From The New York Times:
Ms. Kelly is being considered for a time slot at 9 or 10 a.m., for a show that is expected to begin in the fall. If she moves to 10 a.m., the popular fourth hour of “Today,” hosted by Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, will move to 9 a.m.
One thing that is known for sure: The current iteration of the third hour of “Today,” hosted by Tamron Hall and Al Roker, will be a thing of the past once Ms. Kelly’s show begins.
[..]
Mr. Roker will continue to work on the early parts of “Today.” And Ms. Hall, who is in contract negotiations with the network, will continue to host her MSNBC show and is also expected to make appearances on “Today.”
Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson adroitly summed up the change in a tweet:
Megyn Kelly to replace Al Roker and Tamron Hall on the TODAY SHOW. I'll just let the optics on that soak in for ye. pic.twitter.com/BPlmJ3QTLq
— Joanna Robinson (@jowrotethis) January 27, 2017
According to the Post's Page Six,
But, “The talent on ‘Today’ has been left in the dark, and no one knows why there’s such disruption when the show is doing so well,” an insider told us.
Another adds: “People are pissed. The third hour was beating every syndicated show across the board. They [NBC News chiefs] . . . bit off more than they can chew when they hired Megyn.”
[...]
Meanwhile, another source added, “Savannah is upset. She’s not convinced that Megyn doesn’t want her job. She was told about them hiring her 30 minutes before they made the announcement.”
Wolff described Kelly as "the era's most hardcore Eve Harrington case-- souless, heartless, shameless, avaricious, etc." He said she is despised at Fox and "seemingly, by common agreement throughout the television news business."
It doesn't look like she'll be any more popular at NBC.
Kelly is also supposed to host a Sunday night newsmagazine show. But the Times reported, "There are no concrete plans yet" for that.
(H/T NewsHounds' Richard)
Graphic of Megyn Kelly by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.
I look forward to her having to retract or apologize for lying to the NBC audience. Over and over and over and over, etc…
NBC only hired them to up their Right Wing credibility so that they could get people like Paul Ryan on the air. The amount of viewers that Kelly or Van Susteren can pull in is actually not very high in network news terms. Van Susteren may actually do okay at MSNBC if she can draw some of the Fox News folks over there. But the numbers at NBC itself are much higher than anything a cable news outlet like Fox can pull.
Something tells me Van Susteren is very comfortable in her new post, in that she can pontificate from the Right without having to worry about being in a building where Roger Ailes is harassing at will. If they’ve offered her a decent salary package, she’ll happily stay at MSNBC as their resident Right Winger. Kelly on the other hand is more ambitious. Note that she didn’t settle for the smaller cable news outlet – she wanted to go to the big network desk. But again, she’s only useful to them as their house Right Winger. She’s not a strong enough interviewer to be able to take the mantle of a Barbara Walters, and she’s too biased a person to hand the evening news desk. I have a feeling she’ll try to make a big move at NBC within the first year or two she’s there and wind up being rebuffed.
And Kelly’s dream of being the next Walters or Sawyer is not going to happen. Does she really believe NBC would make her the lead news anchor????
I believe she thinks she’s crossed over to the mainstream and can now build a career at a legitimate news network. From her perspective, the transfer to NBC is the end of her first victory lap as shown by her book tour at the end of 2016. If she pulls off what Wolff thinks she’s trying, she’ll ruthlessly move up and get an actual prime time anchor spot from NBC with a salary commensurate with what she was offered by Fox.
But I don’t think that’s what is going to happen, and it’s certainly not what NBC had in mind. NBC just wanted to see if they could use her as their right wing anchor – that way, they would be able to position themselves farther to the right and more favorable to the GOP. In the current environment, this may make better business sense for them. It’s the same reason they cancelled Phil Donahue’s show from MSNBC in 2003. It’s part of what will be an industry-wide step to the right as a way of covering the Pence White House for the next three years.
In the end, it really doesn’t work out for Fox News personalities to try to make it at legitimate news networks, simply because they are so tainted with the nastiness and mean-spirited bias associated with Fox. It’s interesting that she alienated her colleagues at Fox News, and is already alienating her new colleagues at NBC. That’s not a recipe for a successful anchor career – it never ends well.
Heads up Megyn!! You might have to duck your head every now and then from an empty wine bottle thrown courtesy of Kathy Lee.
