Megyn Kelly Leaves FOX For NBC

FOX news anchor Megyn Kelly has jumped to NBC, where the 46-year-old personality will headline her own afternoon news program at NBC News as well as a prime time “in-depth” Sunday night news show.

“While I will greatly miss my colleagues at Fox, I am delighted to be joining the NBC News family and taking on a new challenge,” Kelly wrote Tuesday in a post on her Facebook page. “I remain deeply grateful to Fox News, to Rupert, Lachlan and James Murdoch, and especially to all of the FNC viewers, who have taught me so much about what really matters"

Of course, there was quite a bit more to it than that. Megyn Kelly essentially owes her career to Roger Ailes, who hired her with little or no previous experience, mentored her and helped her become one of the most successful on air personalities in America. As Ms. Kelly herself put it in an interview on the Charlie Rose program, “I really care about Roger. And he has been nothing but good to me. And he’s been very loyal. And he’s had my back. And he’s looked out for me.”

A year later, she accused him of sexual harassment, to wit that Aisles had engaged in a “cat and mouse” game with her, and made “sexually charged comments” toward her. She also accused Ailes of at least one incident in which he allegedly grabbed her hand and tried to kiss her on the lips.

This was at a time when Ailes had already been accused of 'sexual harassment' by one former anchor woman who was let go from FOX, Gretchen Carlson. Coming from a top FOX talent like Megyn Kelly, that was pretty much all it took to finish Ailes's career. The rumor was that a number of FOX news personalities felt it was unjustified and disloyal on her part, for reasons best known to themselves. A number of them had clauses in their contracts that actually permitted them to leave if Ailes left, and according to several sources FOX narrowly avoided losing a big chunk of its on air talent.There was also allegedly quite a bit of dissension based on Ms. Kelly's temperament, and she was said to have been heartily disliked by a number of her colleagues. That was reportedly one reason Greta Van Sustern left FOX abruptly.There was also ongoing friction between her and FOX stars Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.

Since a lot of this stuff went on behind the scenes, it's hard to nail down what happened, and there's no real evidence either way. Given the climate today, it's very easy to accuse any man of sexual harassment, which used to mean something entirely different than it means today. And it certainly used to mean something very different than what Megyn Kelly alleges Aisles did to her. Ailes, for his part, has continued to deny it. But today if this sort of thing comes down to a he said, she said contest, universities, employers and other institutions tend to believe the woman, disbelieve the man involved and do what needs to be done to make the incident disappear in the name of political correctness. That, of course, is exactly what FOX did.

At any event, this seems to have worked out well for all parties. Megyn Kelly always wanted a mainstream network show and certainly NBC has an atmosphere much more conducive to her politics and her personality than FOX. One of the things keeping her there was apparently the reluctance  of anyone but FOX to pay $20 million per year for her talents. Apparently NBC decided they were willing and able, and they likely acceded to the $25 milion per year she tried to get out of FOX to stick around.

But its also true she'll be leaving an already established audience, and moving to daytime. A lot of people (Katie Courik, Meredith Vieira, and Anderson Cooper among others) weren't able to do it, so we'll see if Megyn Fox can be a trend setter here.

And on the other hand, FOX still has plenty of top rated talent and a lot of FOX viewers and perhaps a number of her colleagues are going to be happy she's history.

So it's a win win for everyone.

The New York Post Strikes Again...

Feel free to leave your own double entendre in the comments section. 

Megyn Kelly Reveals Who She Really Is

FOX news anchor Megan Kelly has become the only FOX employee or news personality to back up former FOX news host Gretchen Carlson in her suit against Fox News executive Roger Ailes for alleged sexual harassment. She has reportedly described 'unwanted sexual advances' by Ailes in detail, which allegedly took place back when Kelly, a former corporate attorney, was just starting out as a legal correspondent in Fox’s Washington bureau.

Odd...that's not what she had to say about Roger Ailes publicly back in October:



Given her stardom at the network there was obviously no need for her to be that effusive in praising him. The other networks would fight to hire her.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here.

Is she lying now, or was she lying back then? Even if those 'unwanted sexual advances' occurred, it seems to me to be a fairly nasty betrayal of someone who she admits was a good friend and mentor who advanced her career unless we're talking about rape or a direct insistence of a quid pro quo. And that's unlikely, since Kelly had a profitable career as an attorney to fall back on when she started at FOX.

Two things are also worth noting. No other FOX employee except for Gretchen Carlson has accused Ailes of anything like this (in fact, they've defended him), and people who engage in sexual harassment usually do it serially as their normal behavior. And second, Ailes' defense team includes none other than left leaning Democrat feminist and FOX consultant Susan Estrich. While I disagree with her politics, I know for a fact she's a woman of principle. It's highly unlikely she'd be involved in Aile's defense if there was much to this.

In any event Megyn Kelly has pretty much revealed what kind of person she is, proving once again that beauty outside can conceal some fairly nasty stuff on the inside. If FOX rolls over for her on this, they have no clue as to what they'll be unleashing. She will be absolutely insufferable in her demands.

UPDATE: It has now surfaced that Roger Ailes' 'sexual harassment' consisted of one incident in 2006 when Megyn Kelly 'didn't like' the way he hugged her! That's it.

There's also talk that if Ailes is fired or forced to resign, top stars Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Bret Bairs and Bill O'Reilly among others will walk away as well.

Both Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson are also reportedly very unpopular with their colleagues.

An Interesting Interview With The Head Of FOX News

The Hollywood Reporter has a fascinating interview with Roger Ailes, the head of FOX news, by far the number one cable news station. It's a very fair and balanced (no pun intended) portrait of a man who has become a legend in the news business. Here are a few bits:

We talk for nearly two hours about everything from Hillary Clinton ("Do you believe that the stuff on 30,000 emails that were destroyed after the prosecutor told [her] to keep it had things on it about yoga? I don't"), the 2016 presidential field in general ("I haven't heard anybody in election campaigns say things that would make me run out and vote for them yet"), exiled NBC News anchor Brian Williams ("I'd put Brian back, but I'd do it the right way"), fatherhood ("It made me a coward") and his legacy ("I don't give a rat's ass what the world thinks").
As I sit across from Ailes on this Wednesday morning in early April, his eyes dart reflexively to the wall of six televisions to the left of his desk; his networks, Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, and the competition, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Bloomberg. My eyes repeatedly wander to a framed photo on a shelf over his left shoulder. It is an iconic black-and-white photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. escorting children into their newly integrated school in Grenada, Miss., in 1966.

The picture is signed by Dr. Bernice King and Dr. Alveda King, King's daughter and niece, respectively, who attended in November the graduation ceremony for the Ailes Apprenticeship Program, a diversity education program he founded in 2004. In point of fact, though, Ailes actually knew Dr. King back in the 1960s — the two crossed paths occasionally when Ailes was a local TV producer in Philadelphia. It's a nugget of Ailes' 'biography that some might find surprising. [...}

As the country enters a presidential campaign season with dynastic implications, Ailes has a dilemma: How much oxygen does he give the fringe GOP candidates who could torment likely frontrunner Jeb Bush and potentially aid Hillary Clinton in the process. It's not a question he answers directly. "I just don't think I should weigh in on it, even in the press because people will think, 'Well, that's the way he's making the network go.' But it looks like Hillary is going to do whatever she wants," he says, "and the press is going to vote for her."

Asked if he thinks Ted Cruz, the intransigent Texas tea party candidate, has a chance of securing the GOP nomination, Ailes deflects: "Listen, we elected Warren G. Harding. Anybody has a chance. You don't know who you're going to be running against. If the other guy falls on his rear end, you could win." [...]

Ailes always has been in the trenches, and that hasn't changed. He's known to call the control room if he sees his anchors straying into territory over which he objects. "I say, 'Tell them to cut this shit out, but don't tell them I called because that will raise the level too high.' " He participates in the 8 a.m. executive meeting (usually by phone), makes all programming decisions and sometimes even negotiates directly with talent (Megyn Kelly, who is a lawyer, negotiates her own contracts directly with Ailes). [...]


Still, there have been changes at the network since the 2012 election, with Ailes clearly wooing a younger brand of conservative. (The network's median age — over 65 — is the oldest of the news networks, though Fox News still outrates the competition among the advertiser-coveted 25-to-54 demographic.) In 2013, he moved Kelly into the 9 p.m. slot occupied for more than a decade by conservative firebrand Sean Hannity. And he built Shepard Smith — an empathic reporter often suspected of being liberal — a $7 million studio and made him the network's on-call anchor throughout the evening.

"Nobody else has this — it's very expensive," says Smith of his show's News Deck, which is staffed by dozens of producers who monitor news feeds and social media for what amounts to a perpetual news factory. "We're paying a lot of people in case something happens. It's an enormous commitment, and nobody else is making it. But those things don't get talked about. What gets talked about is O'Reilly bloviating about something."

Fox News has 19 liberals on the payroll, though they're often dismissed as straw men. When I put this to Juan Williams, a veteran commentator who wrote a well-regarded biography of Thurgood Marshall, he laughs. "Can you get a witness? I'm a witness.

"Clearly the audience likes the kind of tilt that exists [at Fox News]," he says. "But they're not stupid. They want to hear a real, honest conversation. I am allowed to make substantial, critical arguments. And that never gets stepped on."

Williams, in fact, has known Ailes since 1984, when Williams was covering the White House for the Washington Post and Ailes was a campaign advisor for Ronald Reagan.

"Part of the struggle of being a skinny black kid with an afro covering the Reagan White House is that a lot of people [there] basically thought I was the enemy. Ailes' response to me was, 'You're an underdog in this situation, aren't you? I got your back; I'm going to help you.' And he became a key source for me."

Interestingly, while Fox News is the go-to channel for conservatives, about 37 percent of its audience holds "mixed" views, according to a 2014 Pew study, while 14 percent are "liberal" and 4 percent are "consistently liberal." But Ailes doesn't appear to be all that interested in bringing more of these people to his network. "I don't give a rat's ass," he says, breaking out his favorite rodent reference. "My job is to cover the news and do it accurately and fair. And we do. And voila! We have the largest number of independents watching television of any channel. Why is that? Not because we suck around and try to talk these people into watching our programming. We do programming that appeals to them, and so they tune to us. That's how you get them. You can't be chasing these little balkanized groups of people around. It's just nuts. Do your programming. It should be American. We're Americans. It's a culture. We should defend that culture, and we should reinforce that culture."

The full interview is here, and definitely worth a read.

CBS: Rape Doesn't Qualify As A 'Physical Injury'

This one is jaw dropping even for one of the Alphabet networks.

CBS in the San Francisco Bay area ran a horrendous story about a Domino's Pizza delivery woman who was kidnapped and raped in broad daylight while making a delivery in Antioch, a small suburb of Oakland in Contra Costa County.

An armed man described as a juvenile pulled a gun on her, forced her to drive to a secluded spot and then raped her. To show you how brilliant the perpetrator was, after the assault was reported, the police were able to arrest him easily - at the same home where he had asked for the pizza to be delivered.

But the last part of this story is what caught my eye:

Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre said the company is “shocked and horrified by what happened.”

McIntyre said the company will give the employee whatever support she needs. It was not immediately known if she was physically injured.

This poor woman was forcibly raped, and CBS doesn't know if she was physically injured?

Being raped doesn't qualify as a physical injury, no matter what else she might have been subjected to? Is 'aw, she was just raped, it's not like she was physically injured' CBS's viewpoint nowadays?

I point this out because the reporters on this network have repeatedly run stories bloviating about 'rape culture' and  'the Republican's war on women.' Funny, but I've never seen  any thing this insensitive towards rape victims on say, FOX.

The hypocrisy on display is amazing.

Piers Morgan To 'Quit' CNN Show

CNN has decided to pull the plug on Piers Morgan.

While it looked like a good idea for a while to have a mendacious blowhard with an obnoxious foreign accent on the air people would tune in just to dislike, eventually it got old, the novelty wore off and his ratings plummeted. So he's now 'resigning' from CNN's prime time 9 PM slot:

“It’s been a painful period and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings,” he said.

“Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it,” he said. “That’s run its course and Jeff and I have been talking for some time about different ways of using me.”

'Jeff', by the way is Jeff Zucker, formerly chief of NBC, who inherited Piers Morgan from his predecessor Jonathan Klein when he took over.

Morgan's contract runs out in September, so I'm certain Jeff Zucker has some ideas about different ways to use him effectively until then:

 

After that, it's anyone's guess, since he's unemployable in the UK after being caught faking stories while working at The Daily Mirror. MSNBC perhaps? Or maybe he could go back to judging talent shows part time.

In any event, CNN has finally had enough.

Buh Bye!