Is NBC bumping "Megyn Kelly Today" to a later time slot as damage control for the former Fox News host’s struggling show?
According to anonymous sources cited by The New York Post’s Page Six, network execs are considering moving Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb’s popular “Today” show segment forward by an hour to replace it.
Kelly's show has been struggling to draw viewers since it debuted in place of Tamron Hall and Al Roker’s 9 a.m. "Today’s Take" last September.
That reportedly started a chain reaction that saw Gifford and Kotb's viewership drop by 26 percent because viewers who tuned out when Kelly's show came on did not switch back turn on for Gifford and Kotb’s 10 a.m. slot.
Kelly averages just 2.4 million viewers per episode, which is 18 percent below what the hour was drawing last season and for the past two months her ratings have dropped to a low of 1.9 million.
An insider told Page Six that it would be a smart move to swap the shows around so that "Megyn Kelly Today" aired later.
"At the very least that limits the damage already done to Hoda and Kathie Lee — maybe with a strong lead-in from 'Today' at 9 a.m., they’ll even pick up some of the viewers they lost since Megyn went on the air," the source said.
It would certainly be a convenient move for Kotb, who anchors with 7-to-9 a.m. slot with Savannah Guthrie and then has to wait an hour before resuming with Gifford at 10 a.m. again.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Kelly defended her low ratings, saying that she was forced to introduce herself to a new audience.
"People who don’t know me or know some bastardized version of me that they’ve gotten from a website or a TV show," she said.
"There are definitely some who only know me through some caricature they learned about on ‘The Daily Show."