Will Anyone Hire Megyn Kelly Again

Where do you go after you lot've been at the pinnacle and fallen to the depths?

Megyn Kelly, merely fired from NBC's "Today" show, is probably asking herself that question now – and finding that her options are express despite the explosive expansion of the media globe she inhabits.

"She's an anchorwoman-without-portfolio and without a dwelling – she's stateless at present," says Marker Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the Academy of Maryland who spent two decades in Boob tube news for ABC, CNN and local news stations.

"She may be fine (financially) with all the coin she's saved, but in that location are not a lot of options for her, and I'grand certain they're very unappealing options for someone with the money and visibility she'due south used to having."

No other mainstream news network is likely to take her, and her previous dwelling at Fox News is non interested. She could movement to Fox Nation, the network's new streaming service launching Nov. 27, or to the Sinclair Broadcast Grouping, the emerging conservative network of local Television set stations. She could host a new syndicated show tailored to her particular personality or follow the case of her former Fox colleague, Neb O'Reilly, and go directly to the net with an online evidence.

She could even go back to being a lawyer. Or she could go home with millions and write some other score-settling memoir about how she ended up in this predicament. No matter what, these options probably would be seen as big steps down for her.

Yet, information technology'southward hard to imagine Kelly simply fading away – not after her years bathed in the ego-stroking glow of the media spotlight.

"Once they (media stars) get a taste of TV, they're like vampires – they tin can't become back to anonymity. Their psyches won't allow information technology," Feldstein says.

Judy Muller, a longtime former ABC correspondent who is at present a journalism professor emerita at the University of Southern California, says that for TV people, ego and professional prestige often outweigh mere money.

"Just but going domicile and retiring? It's not in the cards," Muller predicts of Kelly. "The expert news for (her) is that there are so many more (news) outlets than there used to exist. It's going to be humbling no matter what she does."

Robert Thompson, head of the Bleier Center for Television and Pop Culture at Syracuse University and a veteran pop culture tracker, acknowledges the vastly expanded media universe but withal believes Kelly'southward options are "really, really limited" given that her previously upwardly career trajectory is probable to exist perceived equally halted if not reversed.

"The question becomes, where do you go that is not seen as a plummet from where you were headed," Thompson says. "I retrieve the manner Megyn Kelly has to contextualize this is: I'g fine with what will be perceived as backward and downward and also be aware that in that location aren't that many upward and onward pathways."

At that place is no getting around it, Feldstein says: Kelly, once a megastar, is now damaged goods less than 2 years afterwards quitting Fox News in a huff and moving to NBC News with ambitions for an Oprah Winfrey-style career and brand modify.

She took over the ix a.1000. "Today" show slot with her own talk show and a gob-smacking multimillion-dollar salary, merely she failed to fit in with an NBC staff suspicious of her signature icy conservatism, which was and so successful at Fob. Afterward criticizing her NBC bosses for their handling of the Matt Lauer sexual misconduct debacle, after conflicts with some high-contour guests and after her ratings began plunging, it all came to tears concluding calendar week.

In remarks that were clueless at all-time, racist at worst, Kelly suggested (to an all-white panel of guests) that being offended by greasepaint in a Halloween costume is simply political correctness run amok. It seemed especially egregious given her history of questionable comments (such as her insistence that Santa Claus and Jesus are white) when she was at Play a joke on.

Instantly, the Twitterverse – and NBC – told her she was wrong. At the very least, it was a remark that revealed ignorance, Muller says. "Yous tin't be a head of bear witness like that for that kind of money and exist stupid. (NBC) didn't buy stupid. The minute she said that, they had no choice."

The next day, Kelly admitted she was wrong in a tearful on-air amends followed by a multiracial panel discussion in which she was schooled on why she was wrong.

"Maybe she lives in such a chimera she didn't understand how radioactive her comments would be," Feldstein says. "All those years of ruby-red meat at Fox made her think that smaller portions somehow would be acceptable at NBC, and they're not."

Already alarmed at Kelly's ratings and their fallout, NBC bosses canceled  her bear witness, and she and her lawyer, Bryan Freedman, began negotiating the terms of her wearisome-motion departure. Would she get all of the many millions left in her reported $69 million contract? Would she have to agree to non to speak sick of NBC in the future? Will at that place exist a non-compete clause? It's all nevertheless up in the air, only Freedman and NBC are publicly sniping at each other, and furious leaking continues.

Meanwhile, Kelly herself is begging for privacy, describing on Twitter how paparazzi are staking out her home. She defendant the British tabloid  "The Daily Post" of crossing a line by photographing her hubby inside their home and recording her 7-twelvemonth-old daughter at her school. "THIS IS Non RIGHT," she tweeted Wednesday.

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The i piece of expert news for Kelly: A Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult survey published Tuesday found that near half of the 2,201 adults polled believed that NBC'southward conclusion to abolish "Megyn Kelly Today" was "as well harsh of a consequence."

Just it's washed, so now what? The obvious choice: Return to Fox News, where her personality, style and views were once wildly pop at the leading cable news network. Only Fox nixed that option.

On Thursday, Fox co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch made information technology official and on the record at the annual New York Times DealBook conference. "Look, I'grand a big fan of Megyn'south. I like her a lot. Nosotros didn't want her to get out Pull a fast one on when she did," he said. "Having said that, I'yard very happy with our current lineup on Fox, and we won't be making any changes there."

Information technology probably didn't help that Kelly left Fox afterward abrasive its base by challenging President Donald Trump'due south attitudes toward women and after she accused Play a joke on honchos of sexual harassment in a tell-all memoir.

"She's down to only a handful of options because she burned her bridges at Fox and the related segment of the correct-fly media, and she burned her bridges at NBC and all of the mainstream media," Feldstein says.

She would have to mend fences with Flim-flam if she wants to return there or to Fox Nation. Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Mail service, told CNN'due south Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" that Kelly might have to swing correct over again.

"What's her next affiliate? I don't think she's done, but it's difficult to see quite how she resuscitates herself at this point," Sullivan said. "She may have to swing back right before she can come back on the air in any meaningful manner."

"Maybe Fox won't have her now because people in that location felt personally betrayed by her defection," Feldstein says. She may take settle for a temporary lower-primal chore elsewhere long enough for Fox to embrace her later, he adds.

Only no other mainstream network or media operation (say, Netflix) will want to take a run a risk on her if it volition exist seen every bit tolerating the kind of remarks that got her fired from NBC, Thompson says. "None of them are going to want to ship a bulletin that 'our standards are lower,'" he says.

A syndicated show might work, with her Oprah ambitions, but building a network of affiliates is easier said than done, Thompson says: "Many are called to be Oprah, few are chosen."

And it would all the same exist seen equally a stride down for her – unless information technology was spectacularly successful the way, say, Jerry Springer was successful.

"Something designed for her would be what she was doing at Fox, so maybe she could accept what she learned from the NBC feel and effort to adjust that and come up up with a 'new' Megyn Kelly show that is more than like Megyn Kelly," Thompson says.

"Information technology could be the next pathway to Oprah-dom. ... But given what she struggled with at NBC, what makes anyone think she wouldn't struggle with it over again?"

Another consideration for potential Kelly employers is that, bated from her greasepaint remarks, "Megyn Kelly Today" simply wasn't that successful as a morning evidence as demonstrated past the ratings.

The about successful morning hosts are warm and fuzzy; Kelly is cool and sharp. If she idea she could rebrand herself, she was incorrect – and so was Andrew Lack, the NBC News president who hired her. Information technology's a lesson for her and for other potential employers.

"You tin can't take someone from Play a joke on who is bonny and had following at that place and drop her into something else that doesn't adjust her," Muller says. "And if she makes a stupid mistake, they all wonder what went wrong?"

The reason for Kelly's falling ratings was obvious, Thompson says: "That show was sometimes painful to sentinel," he says. "She wanted to do an Oprah-style show, and she did information technology really, really badly.

"Every bit good every bit she was at the (prime number-time) format she had at Fob, if I were an NBC executive watching, I would put a big part of the (calculus for firing her) at the ratings non existence good and the prove non being good."

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/11/05/whats-next-megyn-kelly-she-might-have-limited-options/1831838002/

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