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After dissing Tamron Hall, NBC probably has more than a little regret for displacing the popular Black host to bring Megyn Kelly to the network.
It turns out, as many suspected, that Kelly, the former Fox News anchor, is really good at drawing viewership from the older white male demographic. And now NBC executives are in “total panic” over fear that people of color, women and younger audiences will have no interest in watching Kelly’s morning show set to debut on Sept. 25, according to The Daily Beast.
Yeah, there’s a feeling of vindication here. The network pushed Hall, who had a successful program, out the way to open a time slot for Kelly—a superstar in the conservative constellation. It was a move that the National Association of Black Journalists described as a “whitewashing.”
Apparently, the network was dazzled by Kelly’s stardom at Fox, where she sparred with guests about politics and public affairs at the right-leaning cable news station. Angry, older White men loved it. NBC executives, for some reason, decided to gamble that she could attract a wider audience.
However, her initial venture at NBC, a Sunday night public affairs program, failed to get the ratings the executives expected.
“A lot of people were watching the magazine show to try to get a sense of her appeal to the daytime demographic and a sense of how she would be outside of the Fox environment,” a veteran daytime television impresario told The Daily Beast.
The daytime audience is mostly female and about 30 percent Black and Latino, the expert noted, adding that Kelly struggles to connect with women.
Meanwhile, Hall has moved on in her career. Hall is developing a daytime talk show, which she will host and produce, with Weinstein Television.
