Megyn Kelly’s NBC career is in crisis.
Her Sunday night news show was yanked off the air.
Now she has one last chance, and her co-workers are already raising red flags.
Kelly has one more opportunity to make it at NBC.
After her Sunday night news magazine program was pulled before its initial 10 episode run was complete, Kelly was left with her daytime talk show as the last chance to justify her reported $17 million a year salary.
But just when Kelly needs to put her best foot forward, she is reportedly causing problems behind the scenes.
Reports are surfacing that her coworkers are fed up with the preferential treatment given to her.
The New York Post reports:
NBC News is sparing no expense on its new star, Megyn Kelly, and the lavish spending is ticking off some of her new colleagues at the Peacock Network.
Kelly is on a five-day nationwide tour to visit affiliates in major markets, and she is traveling on a charter jet with a support staff of five or six people, including a hairstylist, a makeup artist, a publicist and a security detail.
“People are outraged over her divalike ways,” one network source told me. “They wonder, ‘When does NBC stop throwing money at her?’ ”
NBC is pulling out all the stops because Kelly’s career at the network is off to a rocky start.
Her 9AM show has to be a hit.
If it’s not, NBC will have flushed tens of millions of dollars down the drain on a failed experiment.
With one strike against her, Kelly can’t afford to alienate her coworkers.
But she allegedly is and it wouldn’t be the first time.
Kelly left Fox News under controversial circumstances.
Her testimony against Roger Ailes was key in forcing him out of the network.
But it did not endear her to fellow hosts Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
Kelly even complained about how O’Reilly treated her.
The Hollywood Reporter writes:
“Her colleague at the time Bill O’Reilly, who himself is currently embroiled in a sexual-harassment scandal following reports from The New York Times that he and the network paid over $13 million in settlements to former female staffers, took exception to Kelly’s remarks about the network and boss Ailes. “I’ve had enough of it. It’s a good place to work, all right?” The O’Reilly Factor host said in a 2016 interview with CBS This Morning, saying, “It’s open season, ‘Let’s whack the Fox News Channel.’ “
He added that he had no interest in discussing a topic that “makes my network look bad.”
Kelly responded to the comments by sending a frustrated email to Fox News executives, saying O’Reilly’s words and behavior could have a damaging effect on women working at the company and others across the country, according to reports by the Times.
O’Reilly responded to Kelly’s objections on his nightly program. “If you don’t like what’s happening in the workplace, go to human resources or leave,” said the host.”
This treatment was part of the reason Kelly left Fox News.
But there she was a star.
At NBC she is damaged goods.
She already failed once.
A second strike could be the end of her career at NBC.
