Thursday, June 1, 2017

'Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly' Debuts Sunday

Megyn Kelly will return to television on NBC this Sunday with her new show, “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly.”

According to The NYTimes, she will be the anchor for the weekly show, which will feature a few stories a week, “60 Minutes” style. The show will run through the summer and return early next year after professional football takes over NBC’s Sunday-night schedule.

For her first show, Kelly will have one-on-one interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kelly confirmed the booking Thursday during a report she filed for 'Today' from St. Petersburg, Russia where she is moderating a panel with Putin at the International Economic Forum on Friday.

Kelly emphasized that she would press the Russian leader on allegations that forces in his nation waged a deliberate campaign to interfere with the U.S. presidential election through hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server and by disseminating fake news reports across the Internet. Congress and the Justice Department at present is investigating accusations of Russian meddling in the election as well as the Trump administration’s ties to Russian government officials and oligarchs.

Kelly’s debut is important for NBC, which has made a big investment in her. Executives hope she can bring life to its troubled 9 a.m. hour on weekdays when she starts a new talk show in September, and that her Sunday magazine show can do the unthinkable: create a genuine competitor to “60 Minutes,” the CBS show that is celebrating its 50th year.

NBC, however, is already managing expectations.

The chairman of NBC News, Andrew Lack, said in an affiliate meeting two weeks ago that things would not be “perfect” with Ms. Kelly’s two shows in the early going, but he would rather be “holding our cards than anyone else’s,” according to two people at the meeting.

Since Ms. Kelly went off television, Fox News has lost Bill O’Reilly and also lost some nights in the ratings to MSNBC — a stunning turn of events in cable TV, where Fox News has long been on top.

Of her former employer, Ms. Kelly said that Fox News had a “product that works, and I suspect it will continue to work.”

“I think they’ll be fine, but I do think it’s a rebuilding year,” she continued.

On Mr. Ailes’s death, she referred a reporter to a chapter of her memoir about Mr. Ailes, in which she said she had been sexually harassed by him, before adding, “He was neither all good nor all bad.”

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