Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News Channel personality who made a rocky transition to softer morning news at NBC, was ousted Friday from her Today program after her controversial on-air comments about blackface.
“Megyn Kelly Today is not returning,” NBC News said in a statement. The fourth hour of NBC’s venerable Today franchise that Ms. Kelly’s show occupied will be hosted by other co-anchors from the show beginning next week, the network said.
NBC didn’t address the status of Ms. Kelly herself, who reports said was negotiating over her multimillion-dollar contract.
In this Sept. 21, 2017, file photo, Megyn Kelly poses on the set of her new show, Megyn Kelly Today at NBC Studios in New York.Charles Sykes/The Canadian Press
The cancellation came four days after Ms. Kelly provoked a firestorm of criticism for asking on air why dressing up in blackface for a Halloween costume is wrong. Social media condemnation was swift, and Ms. Kelly apologized to fellow NBC staffers later in the day and made a tearful apology on her show Wednesday.
Ms. Kelly did not host Megyn Kelly Today as scheduled on Thursday and Friday mornings. She is in the middle of the second year of a three-year contract, which reportedly pays her more than $20-million a year.
Ms. Kelly made her debut as NBC morning TV host on Sept. 25, 2017, taking over the 9 a.m. slot of Today and saying she wanted viewers “to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear and maybe a little hope to start your day.” She did cooking demonstrations and explored emotional topics.
She largely floundered with that soft-news focus and a pair of awkward and hostile interviews with Hollywood figures Jane Fonda and Debra Messing backfired with bad publicity. Ms. Kelly briefly found more of a purpose with the eruption of the #MeToo movement.
She made news when interviewing women who accused U.S. President Donald Trump of inappropriate behaviour and spoke with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and Mark Halperin, as well as women who allege they were harassed on Capitol Hill.
Time magazine, which honoured “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year, cited Ms. Kelly as its leader in the entertainment field. The episode with Mr. Trump accusers had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of her biggest audiences.
But strains continued behind the scenes. Ms. Kelly last month publicly called for NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack to appoint outside investigators to look into why the network didn’t air Ronan Farrow’s stories about disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein and allowed him to take the material to the New Yorker. That’s a particular sore point with NBC’s management.
And her ratings have been consistently down from what “Today” garnered in the 9 a.m. hour before Ms. Kelly came on board. In its first year, Ms. Kelly’s show averaged 2.4 million viewers a day, a drop of 400,000 viewers from the year before.