Megyn Kelly’s rocky ratings
New show a work in progress, but Nielsen estimates down
Megyn Kelly called her new NBC morning show a work in progress, but she may need to show marked improvement to justify her price tag.
The former Fox News anchor’s Megyn Kelly Today, which premiered Sept. 25, averaged 2.5 million viewers for her first full week, according to Nielsen estimates. That’s down 12% from results for Today’s 9 a.m. ET/PT hour in the same week last year, in the midst of the presidential campaign — when Al Roker, Tamron Hall and Billy Bush were anchoring — and down a steep 24% among core news viewers ages 25 to 54.
The good news: After starting with 2.9 million on Monday and dipping to 2.3 million by Wednesday, she leveled off there for the remainder of the week.
Premiere-week ratings for the syndicated Live With Kelly and Ryan, which airs opposite Kelly on many ABC stations, are not yet available. But Megyn Kelly Today’s lead-in, the 8 a.m. hour of Today, was off a smaller 8%, to 3.7 million, ranking second to ABC’s Good Morning America (also down) after tying it in the same week last year. And Today’s 10 a.m. hour, starring Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, was down 7% to 1.8 million.
NBC will be hard-pressed to justify Kelly’s estimated $17 million salary when her lesser-paid predecessors had more viewers and her summer magazine series regularly ranked third in its time slot behind repeats of 60 Minutes and America’s Funniest Home Videos.
But NBC News president Noah Oppenheim told USA TODAY before the show premiered that he’d be patient: “Launching a TV show is a hard thing to do, and we’re certainly not naïve about that.”
Critics pounced on what they called Kelly’s missteps in her first days on the air.
She cheerily told a Will & Grace fan on Monday’s premiere that “the gay thing is going to work out great” for him, leading the NBC comedy’s star Debra Messing to later say she regretted agreeing to appear on the show with her castmates.
On Wednesday, Kelly asked Jane Fonda about her plastic surgery as the flummoxed actress, 79, sitting next to Robert Redford, said, “We really want to talk about that now?”
And this week, she generated more headlines after she cut off Tom Brokaw midsentence during his impassioned speech about the National Rifle Association in a panel discussion that followed the Las Vegas massacre, blaming a “hard break” for a commercial.
Critics also took issue with her transformation from a sharp-elbowed interviewer on Fox News’ The Kelly File — where she frequently echoed right-wing talking points about gay marriage and other social issues — to her new role as a warm, touchy-feely morning-show host.
In an earlier interview with USA TODAY, Kelly said she’s not a fan of politics and has long wanted to do the type of show she has now. She said she wasn’t concerned about the weak track record of daytime hosts such as Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Jane Pauley after their Today tenures: “The more time you spend looking over your shoulder, at your competitor or someone that came prior to you, the more you fail.”