Wednesday, January 11, 2017

The Decline and Fall of Megyn Kelly

Michael Wolff is an excellent media reporter. He has better sources than I do. Yesterday he reported on the Megyn Kelly saga, especially on how ineptly she handled the negotiations of her new contract. It shows a woman who was full of herself and whose strings were being pulled by friends who wanted to make her the great feminist heroine. And it shows how she bought the narrative and the role.

Kelly leaned in and, as often happens when people put ideology above loyalty, she compromised herself, her position and very likely her career.

Wolff describes the debacle that ensued when Kelly negotiated her new contract in public:

She bargained to be the biggest voice of the dominant news channel in America — and, as well, the best paid on-air personality in the history of television news. Instead, she’s become merely a contender among the knives-out egos in the contested (and ever dwindling) territory of network news—and at a steep discount to the brass-ring salary she might have had.

In my view the presumption of disloyalty severely damaged Kelly’s reputation at Fox News. It damaged her relationships with her colleagues and made her persona non grata in the building.

Wolff describes how she made herself into the network’s Eve Harrington:

There is at any given time in the television news business invariably one person more mistrusted and reviled by all the other mistrusted and reviled people in the business. This is what’s called the Eve Harrington Syndrome, after the amoral and unscrupulous showbiz heroine in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 film All About Eve (the syndrome, of course, is not gender specific). At Fox, for star colleagues down to make-up artists and, seemingly, by common agreement throughout the television news business, Megyn Kelly is the era’s most hardcore Eve Harrington case—soulless, heartless, shameless, avaricious, etc.

If there were resentments and guardedness before, by this past autumn she was all but shunned, showing up only for her segment and largely talking to no one. The Murdochs’ offer of $100 million and leadership of the network had become a hopelessly poisoned chalice, with Fox an environment in which it would have been impossible for her to work.

Wolff believed that from the Fox perspective, the negotiation were about the future of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch’s sons wanted to make the network more mainstream, despite the fact that in its current incarnation it generates something like $1.5 billion in profit. They wanted Kelly to become the new face of the network.

And yet, Kelly’s inept negotiating style—she should have lowered her head and kept it all private—alienated so many people, Wolff argues, that she would not have been able to function at the network at all.

The result, Wolff concludes, was a considerable loss for Kelly. Was it a tragic fall, brought on by hubris? Or was it simply what happens when you take advice from Sheryl Sandberg?

Fox News will undoubtedly survive. Kelly’s future does not look as bright as it did two weeks ago:

For Megyn Kelly, at a price one person familiar with the negotiations put at $17 million-$18 million (practically speaking it would be hard for NBC to let anyone exceed Today show star Matt Lauer’s recent raise to $20 million), there was a prospective daytime show, with few models of success; a Sunday evening show, typically a loss leader; and a possible move for the hard-news Kelly into the soft hour of Today’ s 9 a.m. hour. Some observers see her inevitable destination as MSNBC—from the top-rated news network to the lowest.

5 comments:

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

"Rupert Murdoch’s sons wanted to make the network more mainstream, despite the fact that in its current incarnation it generates something like $1.5 billion in profit. They wanted Kelly to become the new face of the network."

I am consistently amazed at how supposedly sophisticated, intelligent people seem to do whatever they can to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. $1.5 billion is a lot of profit. It means you're onto something. You don't just get to $1.5 billion in profit as a media company by accident. You build an audience, and you don't ignore them or lose sight of why they watch your programming in the first place. Yet that's what the Murdoch lads seem keen to do.

When you have a solid conservative audience, why mess with it? For all I can speculate, it's more of that cocktail party syndrome. The Murdochs want their friends to like them and not be criticized in polite company. They want to appear/be "respectable." They hated Trump. Now Fox can't do enough coverage of the man. It's odd.

So when we think business is all about profit, we need to check our premises, because stuff like this doesn't make sense. Pursuing Megyn Kelly so assertively seems to reek of that Faith Popcorn nonsense that women make all the buying decisions, so all content and advertising must cater to them. There is a market out there for all kinds of special pieces of the viewership. Fox News discovered the most obvious one -- the most ignored, underserved one -- and they've made a handsome profit off their loyal audience. Now, with the departure of Roger Ailes, it seems like a lot of it is falling apart, and quickly.

It is striking how this is all tied to liberalism. Look at ESPN and the NFL. The top brass and on-air personalities are so politically correct and Leftist in their behavior. It alienates their core/target audience. Ratings are down at both, and they seem uncertain or confused as to why this is. It is striking that Lefties talk all the time about diversity, but it doesn't seem these media companies have enough diversity in their management ranks to see what is so blatantly obvious to the rest of us out here in flyover country.

Sam L. said...

I've never watched her. The Murdock boys may want to have an "in" with the cool kids, rather than making money, but they need to "dance with the partner they brought to the dance", or they'll shoot themselves in the feet (and Neilsen ratings).

Anonymous said...

"The Murdochs’ offer of $100 million and leadership of the network had become a hopelessly poisoned chalice, with Fox an environment in which it would have been impossible for her to work."

100 million for reading news?

She was offered that?

And I thought Tom Brokaw getting 3 million a yr was too much.

Anonymous said...

Matt Lauer gets $20 million?

We have to blame Americans. They watch really dumb stuff and make a lot of idiots who do little or nothing very rich.

I mean how else did Oprah become a billionaire? By doing what?

Geez, I wonder how much Jerry Springer has raked in over the years.

Anonymous said...

Pfft. Lightweights.
Judge Judy reportedly makes $45-47 Million. Talk about American's dumb watching habits.