12/17/2023 0 Comments Fox fews kelly![]() ![]() ![]() What exactly did ABC expect from a woman who has regularly trafficked in rightwing conspiracy theories, Pizzagate and Spygate among them, and once warned that George Soros would “overthrow” the “constitutional republic”? In green-lighting the Roseanne revival only to cancel it after Barr compared a black Obama administration official to an ape, ABC made a similar miscalculation. For NBC, Kelly was a liability not only because it forked over an exorbitant amount to acquire her but because she came with considerable baggage and a taste for controversy. It didn’t work: the network’s 9am hour lost an average of 400,000 viewers.Īll of which is to say that in such divisive times, it’s a fallacy to think networks can profit off a television personality without accounting for the personality itself. Kelly’s career was built on an embrace of the culture wars, but her stint at NBC required an about-face and some collective amnesia. But it only seemed to make headlines when its host had to apologize for something. Her morning show, she said, would “deliver hope, optimism, and empowerment”. Asked to evince interest and charisma when discussing fashion trends, human-interest stories, or pop culture, she would struggle. Kelly was most natural and animated when talking about the #MeToo movement or John McCain. ![]() She was not, however, “done with politics”, as she announced on her show. At the House of Murdoch, Kelly was often fiery, combative and flat-out offensive, passionately insisting for example that Santa Claus and Jesus were white and that the deaths of Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner had nothing to do with race.īut by going toe-to-toe with Donald Trump, and publicly discussing her experience of sexual harassment at Fox, Kelly shored up her feminist bona fides and managed to position herself as a liaison for family values conservatives who found the president temperamentally distasteful, a contingent NBC hoped might find a champion in the 47-year-old former defense attorney. The second, from a devoted rightwing fan base to the center-left, was a dicier proposition, contingent in part on public willingness to forgive and forget. The first crossover, from pugnacious nightly news to easy-breezy 9am comportment, seemed manageable. Nestled somewhere between the liberal media and the carnival barkers of Fox News, Kelly was thought to have crossover appeal. But Kelly’s blackface comments, which earned rebuke from colleagues and network chairman Andy Lack, were merely the last straw.Ībout a year ago, Kelly was something of a coveted figure, having emerged from the 2016 election in a strange and almost singular position. For $69m over three years, the folks at 30 Rock believed they could remake a former Fox News firebrand in their image, moving her from night to morning, from right to center, from hard news to soft. ![]()
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