RUTHFULLY YOURS

The ratings for the latest episode of Megyn Kelly’s prime time Sunday night NBC program are in, and the bad news continues for the former Fox News channel star. Kelly’s June 25 show, her fourth outing on NBC, was the lowest rated one yet. The program came in third in the ratings, beaten by an ABC rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos and by CBS’s 60 Minutes. Kelly had only 400,000 viewers in the preferred demographic (viewers 18-49) while ABC and CBS each had 700,000. (On a typical night – June 22, 2016 – when she was on Fox News at 9 PM ET/PT, Kelly had almost that many viewers in the news demo – ages 25-54 – 384,000.) The total viewers of the three top broadcast channels during Kelly’s hour on June 25, 2017, 7-8 PM ET/PT, were CBS 7.2 million, ABC 3.9 million, and NBC 3.4 million.

Megyn Kelly

Kelly’s interview guest on Sunday June 25 was J. D. Vance, the author of the New York Times best-selling nonfiction book (47 weeks and counting on the list), Hillbilly Elegy. The book has put Vance, a native of Appalachia and a graduate of Yale Law School, on the trendy map for his ability to explain the beliefs of Americans in flyover country (a.k.a. Trump supporters) – who have been variously described elsewhere as “deplorables” who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” – to the cognoscenti on the coasts.

J. D. Vance on Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly

A number of mainstream media outlets increasingly appear to be lying in wait for Kelly to fail. An article in Breitbart links to a selection of them.

Kelly’s terrible ratings have led to many questions about her marketability and competence.

A network executive reportedly told CNN that NBC’s “fundamental mistake” was thinking Kelly was a “superstar” while Variety noted that Kelly’s star is ”dimmer than ever.” The Boston Globe eviscerated Kelly for being a “poseur” who lacks the “acumen” and “magnetism” to succeed at NBC News. Variety also pointed out that Kelly has pretty much alienated everyone in just three weeks at NBC.

NBC News has reportedly been “freaking out” over the“ratings disaster” that Kelly is turning out to be. Her ratings have been so terrible a New York radio host said NBC may be looking to unload Kelly and even ask Fox News to take her back.

But a high-ranking Fox News official told Breitbart News last week that there would be “no way” Kelly could crawl back to the network if such a scenario occurred and emphasized that Kelly simply would “not be welcomed back.”

“Come Hither:” Megyn Kelly Interviews Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia June 2017

Kelly’s first NBC show, on June 4 with Vladimir Putin, was her highest-rated program to date, but it lost one million viewers – over 15 percent of its total audience – in its second half hour after the Putin interview ended. That episode came in second to ABC’s broadcast of an NBA Finals basketball game.

Kelly’s third show, on June 18 with Alex Jones, was also a ratings disappointment and a full-blown public relations disaster. Any positive critiques of that episode, according to Newsmax, were accountable more to the efforts of the show’s editors (to make Alex Jones look bad and salvage the show’s reputation among liberal elitists) than to “Kelly’s performance in the interview.”