Megyn Kelly is not just dragging down the 9 a.m. hour of “Today,” her ratings are currently hurting co-workers Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb at 10 a.m.
Comparing Kelly’s first two weeks versus the “Today” show’s former 9 o’clock iteration over its final 10 episodes, “Megyn Kelly Today” has declined an average of 10 percent among adults 25-54, which is the key demographic for news programming.
When looking at the same two weeks from 2016, the falloff is worse: a 29 percent drop.
The following hour — Kathie Lee and Hoda’s — is down 18 percent year over year.
Of course, there’s a reason why viewership of news programming may be down from last fall given the lead-up to the presidential election.
And “Today” might also have benefited from the boost of the Summer 2016 Olympics, which snuffed out the torch’s flame on August 21.
Kelly also scored impressive ratings on Monday, when the former Fox News Channel anchor had a live interview with TV reporter Lauren Sivan about her allegations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
That particular outing averaged 927,000 demo viewers and 2.695 million overall audience members. Those are highs for the young series.
Although “Today” is an NBC News production and the 9-11 a.m. hours do discuss current events, some of the lighter fare clearly targets housewives and stay-home-moms, which are admittedly outdated terms for women 25-54.
As a matter of fact, Kelly’s key competition — the syndicated “Live With Kelly & Ryan” — measures itself solely by that yardstick.
What’s more alarming for NBC is that in her first two weeks Megyn Kelly continues to lose women in the all-important 25-54 age range as the show progresses.
Nielsen even breaks the ratings down in 15-increments, and here’s the viewership she lost, compared to the two-week period of “Today” before she started:
And the viewership decline has also impacted Kotb and Gifford, who have steadily lost viewers for the past two weeks, compared to the previous two weeks:
All that said, it’s still too soon to close the book on Kelly. New show launches and rebrands can take time, and casual fans may not even know where to find the “Kelly File” alum, something she surely learned on Sunday nights through the summer.
The “Today” show did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on this story.
Megyn Kelly's 9 Biggest Moments at Fox News, From 2012 Election to Trump Debate (Videos)
After 13 years as one of Fox News' most prominent faces, Megyn Kelly is moving to NBC. Her career has been one filled with viral interviews and high-profile moments, from questioning conservative pundits to intense debates about race to encounters with Donald Trump (weeks before he announced his candidacy in 2015).
After six years as a contributor and substitute anchor, Kelly finally became a full-time Fox News host in 2010. But her breakthrough moment came on Election Night 2012, when she questioned Karl Rove about why he wouldn't accept the network's analysts who called the election for Barack Obama .
This led to Kelly taking matters into her own hands, leaving the set and walking through the hallways of the Fox News to ask the analysts at the decision desk for their reasoning behind calling the race for Obama.
Kelly also had a history of locking horns with the right's major talking heads. In 2013, when Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson attacked a Pew study that found that 40 percent of women are now the major breadwinners for their households, Kelly called them out.
Kelly also got into a major spat with Newt Gingrich last year when he accused her of being "fascinated with sex" during a discussion of Donald Trump's sexual assault allegations. She ended the segment with this terse sign off: "We’re going to leave it at that, and you can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them, Mr. Speaker."
Which isn't to say that Megyn Kelly was seen by Fox News' liberal critics as a saving grace for the "fair and balanced" network. She was bashed in 2013 when she responded to the suggestion of a diverse Santa Claus by saying: "For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white."
She also got into an extremely heated debate about race with actor and author D.L. Hughley in 2016 over the fatal shootings of black men like Philando Castile and the protests that have spawned from them.
Before the 2016 election, Kelly's biggest moment came when she landed an exclusive interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, the stars of "19 Kids and Counting" after a child molestation scandal surrounding their eldest son, Josh Duggar. While the interview was a massive ratings and headline magnet for Fox News, Kelly was criticized for not asking tough questions.
But as Megyn Kelly says goodbye to the house that Rupert Murdoch built, there will always be one moment above all that will define her career: her 2015 face-off with the man who will be the next President of the United States.
1 of 9
A look back at the anchor’s most famous and notorious on-camera moments
After 13 years as one of Fox News' most prominent faces, Megyn Kelly is moving to NBC. Her career has been one filled with viral interviews and high-profile moments, from questioning conservative pundits to intense debates about race to encounters with Donald Trump (weeks before he announced his candidacy in 2015).
