By Jared Goodwin | Posted on July 23, 2019 2:02 PM
The return of Megyn Kelly to TV news seems imminent as rumors of her covering the 2020 presidential election for Fox News begin to surface.
Disgraced television reporter, Megyn Kelly, has spent the last year away from the camera and out of the public eye. Kelly’s stint of unemployment came as a result of her controversial comments justifying the use of blackface during the Halloween episode on the third hour of the Today show, aptly named Megyn Kelly Today. Her remarks left a bad taste in the mouths of many, causing online outrage and NBC phone switchboard mayhem. This ultimately led NBC executives to cancel Megyn Kelly Today and remove the former Fox anchor from the network. After her time away from the social spotlight, Megyn Kelly has begun to prepare for a comeback into television news, but her choices are now limited.
What Has Megyn Kelly Be Up To?
Kelly has spent the year staying out of the public’s gaze and using her time to heal from the catastrophic fall-from-grace she experienced. She has used her free time to be with her children and take up new hobbies such as yoga and cooking. However, relaxing is far from the only thing Kelly has been focusing on, as a successful comeback to television requires a greater understanding of the new media landscape. Sources close to Kelly report that she has taken a step back from her normal television-based perspective in order to get a better picture of the ever-evolving media landscape that we find ourselves in today. In order to do this, Kelly put a greater emphasis into understanding mediums such as podcasting and radio in order to uncover their role in the world and in her future. With this added understanding, Kelly hopes that she can better navigate the media landscape and successfully launch her comeback. Kelly is eyeing her own show on Sirius Satellite and may be a great shoe-in for Howard Stern’s departure.
The 2020 Presidential Election Looms Closer
It is rumored that one of Kelly’s largest strategies to regain her former career path is to capitalize on the upcoming 2020 presidential election. This would serve as a rather poetic way to reinvigorate her career seeing as the previous presidential election was how she got her big break in the first place. She first made a name for herself during her role as moderator of the 2015 Republican Party presidential debate. During the debate, she questioned Donald Trump about his temperament and his history of using derogatory and misogynistic terms when referring to women. This line of questioning helped build Kelly’s fanbase and portrayed her to be a conservative newscaster who is not afraid to grill members of either political party that are seen as deceitful or disagreeable. While utilizing the upcoming election may not bring about the same levels of approval in light of her recent controversies, Kelly hopes that she can cash in on some of the same momentum she gained in previous years.
Potential Offers From Television Networks
The largest issue for Kelly as she attempts to jump start her career in television is who is willing to house the ousted newscaster. Many of the largest networks, such as ABC, CBS and CNN, have already made it clear that they are not willing to hire Kelly, especially after her controversial comments. NBC is also off the table as many of her former coworkers have publicly condemned her and her comments as “ignorant” “racist” and “indefensible”. NBC also paid a reported $69 million, so they are not looking to enter into that kind of contract again.
Many see Kelly’s viable options as being the right-wing news outlets such as Newsmax, Sinclair, and One America News Network. These networks are not only politically like-minded to Kelly’s conservative viewpoints, but have also expressed interest in working with her. The problem they have is that her star power is just too big for them. Christopher Ruddy, Chief of Newsmax, has publicly stated that he would gladly meet with Kelly to discuss her future employment, however these meetings have yet to occur and pundits agree that he probably could not afford her. The largest obstacle for Kelly to accept a position at one of these networks is that they can not match the levels of compensation that she has previously received at larger networks like NBC or Fox.
The most likely scenario for Kelly is that she will return to the Fox News cable channel. The no.1 cable news channel in the nation. Though she may have left the network on bad terms, Fox can not deny the star power that Kelly would bring back to the organization and all the bad people at Fox are now gone or deceased. Fox valued Kelly’s presence so much before her departure to NBC that they counter offered with a $100 million contract in order to encourage her to stay, although it proved unsuccessful. When questioned on the topic of Kelly’s potential return to Fox, Chairman and CEO of Fox, Lachlan Murdoch stated he is “very happy with our current lineup on Fox, and we won’t be making any changes”. While this sounds like the door is closed on Megyn Kelly for the time being, the statement may also serve to silence rumors of her return as negotiations begin behind closed doors.
Is Megyn Kelly Actually The Puppet Master?
Pundits have speculated on just how smart Megyn Kelly really is and that she may have engineered all of her career moves to date, in her favor, without us even realizing. Starting with her career as a news anchor at Fox in 2010, Kelly worked hard and waited a few years to become a prominent figure on the network. After several shows and six years at the news desk, Kelly managed to convince Roger Ailes to grant her role of moderator at the Republican presidential debate in 2015. She slammed Trump at the debates and then her career went into the stratosphere. She would go on to capitalize from this opportunity by presenting herself as a hard-hitting journalist who is not afraid to grill insincere politicians, spurring a massive spike in her popularity. Next, she leveraged her growing fame to achieve the next step in her climb to the top of the journalistic heap, a morning talk show on NBC. Although that ended poorly, some still believe that her NBC fiasco could have been a part of her master plan to gain her entire contract earnings for three years, by getting fired after just the first year. It is widely known that Megyn Kelly never felt at home during her stay at NBC as the network, and its Liberal-leaning viewership, have never been known for accepting conservatively minded individuals and she knew that going in to the contract. Some NBC staffers even resigned from their jobs in protest of Kelly’s addition to the Today show team. The culture of NBC has led some to theorize that Kelly may have actually made her controversial statements as a master plan to get fired intentionally. That would allow her to move away from the NBC network while still collecting all of the promised sum of her contract. After collecting her approximate $69 million, she could then likely leverage her star power to attain a senior management position at Fox News. This would then give her the opportunity to rise through the management ranks and eventually take the CEO job away from Lachlan Murdoch, who has only recently received that appointment. Though this theory is denied by reps from Fox, NBC, and Kelly herself, it rides heavily on Fox’s undetermined decision to rehire Kelly to the channel, which appears just to be a matter of time. It is undeniable that the former Fox News anchor has made some extraordinary career moves in a relatively short amount of time and perhaps Kelly has been the puppet master the entire time.
