Megyn Kelly's star could be waning after the rollout of her Sunday night news program on NBC, which Variety has dubbed a "disaster."
After riding the Fox News pre-2016 election wave into the stratosphere, Kelly made the move to NBC for a reported $17.5 million annual salary, a Sunday evening "Dateline"-style newsmagazine show, and a daytime program coming this fall.
But her start at the network hasn't made quite the splash Kelly, and surely NBC, had anticipated.
"By all measures, her 'Sunday Night' effort been a disaster," Variety TV critic Sonia Saraiya writes. "Her interviews have been either ridiculed or loathed by the rest of the press, and the ratings reflect a distinct lack of interest."
Sure, she managed to score a one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin for her debut episode, but her controversial Alex Jones piece pulled in just 3.5 million viewers, dwarfed by a rerun of CBS rival "60 Minutes."
"Kelly’s problems go beyond ratings," according to Saraiya. "Her June 18 episode, an interview with InfoWars’ Alex Jones, began as a problematic decision and snowballed into a PR nightmare. Kelly couldn’t handle either the interview or its fallout."
Kelly will be going head-to-head with Kelly Ripa once her 9 a.m. daytime show kicks off, and Saraiya says it'll be a tough go to measure up.
"Kelly has never emphasized intimacy or likability in her on-camera persona," she writes. "Her style is legalistic and cool, with a brass-tacks elegance that can, at best, appear regal. Compare this to Kelly’s fiercest competitor in the 9 a.m. timeslot: Kelly Ripa, a brash, bubbly personality who manages to be both inclusive and distinctive at the same time."
Variety notes that Kelly's success at Fox News had much to do with her appearance as an anomaly to its base — female, conservative, skeptical of President Donald Trump.
But this isn't Fox News anymore.
". . . if Kelly’s move to NBC was both an attempt to cement her brand and a network gambit to draw a certain demographic of viewers, it has failed on both counts," Saraiya writes. "It may be worth going back to the drawing board entirely with Megyn Kelly — to evaluate her strengths not just by what she is or isn’t, but rather by what she can actually do."