NBC cancels Megyn Kelly's show after controversy over Blackface

Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News Channel personality who made a difficult transition to softer morning news on NBC, was ousted Friday from her "Today" program after her controversial remarks about Blackface.

"Megyn Kelly Today" does not come back, "NBC News said in a statement, the fourth hour of NBC's venerable" Today "franchise of Kelly's show will be hosted by other co-hosts of the show which begins next week, announced the network.

NBC did not mention the status of Kelly herself, who would have negotiated a multi-million dollar deal.

The cancellation comes four days after Kelly caused a storm of criticism for asking the radio why dressing in blackface for a Halloween costume was wrong. The condemnation of social media was swift and Kelly apologized to other NBC staff later in the day and apologized tearfully on her show Wednesday.

Kelly did not host "Megyn Kelly Today" as planned on Thursday and Friday morning. She is in the middle of the second year of a three-year contract, which would bring her more than $ 20 million a year.

Kelly debuted as a NBC morning television presenter on September 25, 2017, thus occupying the time slot of "Today" at 9 am and claiming that she wanted the viewers "laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear and maybe a little hope". to start your day. She did cooking demonstrations and explored emotional topics.

She largely failed with this soft focus on news and two awkward and hostile interviews with Hollywood personalities, Jane Fonda and Debra Messing, who turned against bad publicity. Kelly briefly found a more useful goal with the eruption of the # MeToo movement.

She gave news by interviewing women who accused Trump of inappropriate behavior and had spoken to accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Bill O'Reilly, Roy Moore and Mark Halperin, as well as women who claimed to be harbaded at Capitol Hill.

Time magazine, which named "The Silence Breakers" as a personality of the year, named Kelly as its leader in the entertainment industry. The episode with Trump's accusers has had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of his biggest audiences.

But tensions continued behind the scenes. Last month, Kelly publicly called on NBC News president Andrew Lack to appoint external investigators to determine why the network did not broadcast Ronan Farrow's stories about the outrageous framework of Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein. had allowed him to bring the information to the New Yorker. This is a sore point at NBC management.

And her odds have steadily decreased from what she reported today before 9 hours before Kelly's arrival. In its first year of operation, the Kelly program has averaged 2.4 million viewers per day, a decrease of 400,000 viewers compared to the previous year.