Megyn Kelly leaving Fox News
FOR Megyn Kelly, the shift from Fox News to NBC – where she will host a daily daytime show and a Sunday newsmagazine program – will be a test of whether she can connect with a broader audience in a different format and reach another level of television stardom.
But her move, announced Tuesday, has broader implications for the telev ision news industr y, raising new questions about the future of Fox News, where she was a countervailing presence in an opinion lineup heav y with right-leaning ideolog y, and of NBC News, which has been a longtime bête noire for conser vative press critics. And it comes as all news organisations gird for a new era of media coverage that arrives Januar y 20 with the inauguration of Donald Trump.
The Murdoch family, which controls Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, had become so invested in Kelly as a franchise that they were prepared to pay her a salar y of more than $20 million a year.
People inside and outside the network widely took that to mean the Murdochs were staking the network’s future on a journalist who effectively made her name by upending the expectations for a Fox News anchor – for instance, by publicly taking on the Republican nominee for president.
But now Fox News, long the cable news ratings leader and KellyPresents, an influential voice in the national political debate, is on course to begin coverage of a new administration with no prime-time anchor with Kelly’s history of challenging Trump. Her show, The Kelly File, was sandwiched between the toprated program of Bill O’Reilly – she was regularly second to him in the cable news ratings – and that of Trump’s major booster, Sean Hannity.
Her departure, coming after that of Greta Van Susteren, also means that Fox faces the prospect of having no female host in prime time. That is a potentially troubling development for the network as its seeks to move past last summer’s sexual harassment scandal involving its co-founder and former chairman, Roger Ailes, in which many women described experiencing harassment or intimidation.
For NBC, the addition of Kelly, 46, may help address a challenge confronting many major news organisations: connecting with a politically diverse audience. In bringing Kelly to NBC, Andrew Lack, the chairman of the news division, is adding a journalist schooled in the preferences and worldviews of the conservative Americans who helped elect Trump, and whose anger so many news organisations failed to appreciate.
Kelly’s closely watched career move capped months of drama in the political sphere, in which she was often at the Megan centre of Trump’s intense, anti-press campaign, and in the media world, where she became a key figure in the events that led to Ailes’ ouster. Kelly was the most prominent among a group of women at the network who told internal investigators that Ailes had engaged in inappropriate behaviour. (Ailes has denied all the accusations.)
Despite having made a generous offer to retain Kelly, Rupert Murdoch, an executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, whose bare-knuckled negotiation tactics are legendary, offered a supportive statement about her decision to leave.
“We thank Megyn Kelly for her 12 years of contributions to Fox News,” the statement read. “We hope she enjoys tremendous success in her career and wish her and her family the best.”
Kelly had spoken with top executives at ABC News, CNN and in the syndication industr y, as well as NBC News, but NBC remained largely under the radar as a landing spot. One person briefed on Kelly’s deliberations said that Lack won her over by starting the talks with a question about what she was seeking, instead of flatly offering possibilities.
He then came back with a deal that was tailored to her preferences.
People briefed on the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to disclose what Kelly’s new annual salary would be at NBC. Fox News rivals who sought to hire Kelly away, including NBC News, had indicated that they could not match the $20 million offer from Fox.
But even a modest raise for Kelly would place her among telev ision’s highest paid journalists. The Wall Street Journal recently reported she was to collect $15 million for the final year of her contract.
Yet the move has its risks for all involved. Daytime television has been notoriously difficult for news stars.
People involved in the discussions said that the program was not planned to be in the mould of a traditional daytime talk show, nor much like the soft-focus prime-time special Kelly hosted last May on the Fox broadcast network, which drew some harsh criticism.