NBC host Megyn Kelly threw out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game in North Carolina and insisted her “ratings were fine” even though NBC reportedly pulled her Sunday newsmagazine show at least two episodes earlier than planned because of the program’s horrific ratings.
“I thought the ratings were fine,” Kelly said in Chicago earlier in the week before throwing out the first pitch at a Durham Bulls minor league game on Thursday evening. Kelly is on a promotional tour for her new morning show that will debut in September as NBC is spending heavily to minimize the chances of her damaging the network’s Today show brand even more than she already may have.
Kelly’s show lost to reruns of 60 Minutes and America’s Funniest Home Videos every week and continued to set new viewership lows every week since until her final episode after she returned from her one-week hiatus during the Fourth of July Weekend. The years-old Dateline rerun that aired when she took that week off actually got more viewers than any of her shows after her return. In addition, another Dateline rerun that aired the week after Kelly’s show was unceremoniously pulled again got better ratings, as viewers came back to the network as soon as her show was booted.
As Breitbart News has pointed out, “Kelly’s disastrous ratings, in addition to giving Matt Lauer job security, have led executives to wonder whether her Sunday night program will even come back on the air after football season.”