Posted on 05/20/2016 9:24:07 PM PDT by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
Megyn Kelly’s much-publicized broadcast special with Donald Trump was supposed to launch the Fox News star into the stratosphere of television anchordom. Instead, the widely panned show seems to have achieved the opposite result: It exposed the extent of her limited mainstream appeal. Kelly drew just 4.8 million viewers on Tuesday night, a number television executives say is a disappointment by any measure. Three senior executives I spoke with say an audience of 9 million would have been a success. "Not good for her at all," was how one insider put it.
In the days since, Kelly has been working to contain the fallout. She took aim at critics on her cable show Wednesday night by deploying an age-old Fox News tactic: claiming the backlash was a result of liberal media bias. But behind the scenes, she is said to be worried about the response. “She’s very upset with the show reaction, and in hindsight with how it was produced,” one Fox veteran told me.
The stakes for Kelly are high. As the Times recently reported, she’s in the final year of her contract and has been on a media blitz campaigning for a bigger job at Fox or another network. In recent interviews, she’s said her ambition is to be a combination of Oprah, Charlie Rose, and Barbara Walters. The special was essentially a public interview for her next job. But Kelly's chummy treatment of Trump may have damaged her brand as tough and fair-minded (this being Fox, the bar was pretty low). Worse, she cozied up to Trump at the very moment Rupert Murdoch decided Fox News will support the GOP front-runner. By lobbing softballs — or, as Times TV critic James Poniewozik described her questions, "airballs" — at Trump, Kelly came across like any other GOP cheerleader at the right-wing network.
The question for Kelly and her agents at CAA is where to go from here. Before the special, she had maneuvered herself into a position of significant leverage over her boss Roger Ailes and seemed poised to land either a new deal from Fox with a salary in the $25 million range or a plum job at another network. Industry sources said Ailes couldn’t afford to lose Kelly. Now her advantage looks smaller — a turn of events that surely pleases Ailes. According to one Fox insider, Ailes was heard “snickering” in a meeting yesterday when the topic of Kelly’s special came up in conversation. (Ailes's spokesperson Irena Briganti did not respond to a request for comment.)
For their part, Kelly's team doesn't seem eager to talk about the program. When I called her CAA agent Matt DelPiano to ask him about the special, he hung up.
So instead of leveraging this into tens of millions as a reward for knocking Trump out, she now loses all her star power and is in a much worse position than when this race started.
I saw her tweet before the first debate saying someone may be out of the nomination by tomorrow night. She was full of herself to believe she had that power. I no longer can watch her.
Tuned in for about five minutes of the Trump/megyn thing, and the second time she referred to herself as ‘yours truly’ I turned it off.
Another unplanned forced vacation where she decompresses on her psychotherapist’s sofa, just like last time.
Obscurity.
That looks incredibly painful!
Lol!
But the headshot to meager’s career is much more brutal and comical.
Trump’s “Real Housewives” style trashing and gossip regarding Megyn Kelly is actually appealing to the average voter.
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Yes but now that he has the nomination, he has to be more “Presidential” according to the pundits.
I’m glad that he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the jabbering class.
Harry Truman was told to “give ‘em hell Harry”. He said, “I don’t give ‘em hell, I tell them the truth and they think it’s hell”>
Fox needs to move Hannity up to 9 and put Kelly on at 3 am
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Or do like PMSNBC did to Al $harpton. (Once a week, on Sunday.
Megyn and Michelle aka “Help, I can’t get up” can team up and start their own show “The View from the Pit”.
LOL! I had planned to boycott it, but Darlin wanted to see it. Unfortunately, even though we looked for it, we could never find it.
We read the thread about it and decided from it she blew her chance to do a real interview - not soft balls, nor prosecution either - of a possible future president. It was all about her and trying to get Donald to kiss the owie. We didn’t miss anything.
Become a Times Square hooker? /s
LMFWSCAO
My husband went to Syracuse with her. I said one night “she’s gotten really full of herself”. He said no, she’s always been like that.
I know, like the Zapruder film, right? But apparently she was okay. The theory is that the impact was dissipated by the exploding watermelon, and that if it didn't explode it would have put her in the hospital.
Next? Porn?
He looks like the love child of Kasich and Beaver Cleaver (if that’s even possible; Salon thinks men can menstruate, so. . . .).
That she even thought that was her role should have had her removed before the debate even happened.
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