I was curious after reading the WaPo review of her first day, "NBC’s Megyn Kelly experiment unveils its latest creation, a morning-show Bride of Frankenstein," by Hank Steuver:
“Megyn Kelly Today” is meant to be the final, dazzling piece of Kelly’s multimillion-dollar transmogrification from steely Fox News host to a mushy, hugs-for-everybody, midmorning TV host.... The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find....This show is not for me, so it really doesn't matter what I think. I don't watch Ellen DeGeneres or Kelly Ripa. I have zero patience for that kind fluffy, female time-waster. I especially loathe fakely enthusiastic studio audiences, especially when the host continually plays to them and insists that they all agree about everything, such as in the clip above, when Megyn Kelly goes on and on about how everyone cares about who Prince Harry is fucking. I'm paraphrasing, because I don't care.
The hour crawled by. A middle segment featured the “Today” regulars welcoming Kelly to 30 Rockefeller Center, a predawn festivity of studied smarm, with the added delight of seeing Kathie Lee Gifford sit in her makeup chair and play nice-nice with Kelly the way an old house cat would welcome a naive and extra-squeaky mouse to the kitchen. Then everyone came to Kelly’s stage to drink mimosas and bask in the NBC-ness of it all.
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I'm a 'lover' of the 1st Amendment to. And I DON'T HAVE TO WATCH ANY NFL GAMES. 1st Amendment includes protesting by spending my money elsewhere.
I'm a lover of the First Amendment, too. That fact has very little to do with how I feel about the NFL controversy. The NFL would not let its players wear shoes showing support for 9/11 victims. Nor would it allow the Dallas Cowboys to wear a sticker on their helmets honoring the Dallas Police officers killed at a Black Lives Matter rally. But, the NFL will allow its players to kneel in protest during the national anthem. The NFL is clearly controlling the speech of its players. So, I don't see how free speech is an issue in the current controversy.
The whole Megyn Kelly thing is just a bummer to me. I never really watched her when she was on Fox but I had respect for her. She seemed earnest, ambitious, and hard working.
Now she's descended from the world of serious primetime political commentator to banal daytime chat, it just seems like she's given up.
She will sink like a stone.
A couple of years from now she will be with other failed TV newsbabes on Discovery ID, the "Murder Channel."
Being a TV host, even though it's easy to parody, requires a different skill set than being a news host. It's personality driven, which is why Rosie O'Donnell failed and Ellen succeeded. At the end of the show, the viewers are supposed to want to invite that person back into their home. It's like being a professional guest.
"I have zero patience for that kind fluffy, female time-waster."
C'mon Alrhouse - tell us how you really feel.
These brainless bimbos give smart, attractive women a bad name. Heh.
Unwatchable show. And I used to like Megyn Kelly. What happened? It's like they drained her of any intelligence or insight.
DKWalser noted: ..., the NFL will allow its players to kneel in protest during the national anthem. The NFL is clearly controlling the speech of its players. So, I don't see how free speech is an issue in the current controversy.
I think you've got it backwards. The NFL players clearly control the team owners. The players decided to kneel; and they decided not to honor the Dallas poe-lease. It's a master/slave fantasy playing out for many of them and the slaves are a risin'' up!
Also, NFL players despise many of their fans -- witness the suppressed spitting story. This cannot end well.
Queen for a day redux. Megyn is there to live out the audience's fantasies and be rewarded for her great courage...her being an oppressed woman victim and all , who has to flaunt her breasts and legs in public to get her $20,000,000 pay checks from Patriarchs.
And the beat goes on.
That's mean!
Taking the Moe Szyslak approach, "I'm a well-wisher in that I don't wish [her] any specific harm."
I've always thought the silly and overrated Megyn Kelly was a lightweight.
The Today show hosts peaked with J. Fred Muggs.
Megyn who?
a morning-show Bride of Frankenstein
Oh, I dunno, in your picture she looks a lot perkier than Mrs. F. Monster ever did, and her hair is all wrong. I bet she can talk, too, in addition to hissing.
Judging by the advertising, they are appealing to the incontinent demographic.
The 1st amendment has nothing to do with this situation. Contract law might. Any lawyer ought to understand that the 1st A only proscribes the government from interfering.
In general (absent a CBA), employers can dictate behavior (speech) by their employees on the job.
The NFL has those sorts of things in the Contract. Hence they have prohibited 9/11 memorials, and in a famous example, stopped the Cowboys from exhibiting sympathy for a shooting of Dallas police.
Players can take a knee
POTUS can tweet
League can sanction
Owners can bench
but it's contract law (except the POTUS part)
Thank you for clarifying that you were paraphrasing regarding "who Prince Harry is fucking".
Megyn never gave Howard Stern a definitive answer on whether she has anal sex.
Coy.
I am Laslo.
Why anyone watches TV, esp AM TV, is beyond me.
I don't turn on the TV until bed-time. PBS is a great sleep aid.
That was such a bitchy review that I assumed Hank Steuver was gay. Sure enough, he is.
Don't know if the show will succeed and don't care either. Kelly may be lots of things but "naive" isn't one of them.
Her dress is too long and she's standing up.
She needs to be sitting down with her exposed legs in a glass display case like she was at FOX.
Her schtick is bleeding away...from wherever.
At least the Telegraph cares who Harry is fucking, and one assumes that Harry and Meghan Markle care, too.
Ann,
I don't care either, and as far as I am concerned you could have saved yourself the pain of watching half of that show and not blogging it.
I appreciate your dedication, and hope it didn't destroy very many of your brain cells.
Oh, SayAahh, that was cruel. Wish I'd thought of it.
It is obvious the knives are out for Megyn so she is now the underdog IMO. And America loves an underdog so don't bet against her.
I actually watched a couple of segments of a Kelly Ripa show a while back. She really is cute and perky. I think that's what sells a morning tv show host. Kathy Lee Gifford and Katie Couric got their big break because they were cute and perky. Not so much anymore, but their fans remember. Megyn Kelly is lithe and fit, but she is not cute and perky. Cute and perky is what puts you over the top. I don't foresee any great success on this show. You can talk pablum like she does here, but if you look sharp and tough, it just emphasizes that it's pablum. You have to be cute and perky to gush about the royal family......She's got talent, but this is the wrong format. She and Rachel Maddow should have a late night show where they discuss in detail all the things they hate about Trump.
It's kind of like Mark Spitz, after he won 7 gold medals in the 1972 Olympics. Everyone wanted to know how he was going to cash in. He said he would think carefully about it all. After some time he did a commercial for Schick razors. In it he talked about how he had really thought carefully about who would be his first endorsement.
I think it was his last, too. He had a poster that was successful, but no one really cared what Mark Spitz thought. At least not months after his fame peaked.
Megyn's fame peaked at Fox. Since she bailed and whined about how mean Roger Ailes made her famous, no one has seen her except on the covers of the tabloids. And the people who appreciated her work in the evening at Fox aren't the people who watch daytime Girl Power fests.
Didn't Murphy Brown already do this comedy bit?
Oh what. NBC and Kelly are serious. Nevermind.
I’m agnostic on Megan but have been a fan of Kathie Lee’s pain ever since her sex-starved husband was caught on a hidden camera in a hotel room confessing his fondness for butt-loving to some stewardess who had been paid by a tabloid to set him up. And the author’s bitchy line about Kathie Lee is pretty good.
"Why anyone watches TV, esp AM TV, is beyond me."
I used to watch Good Morning America back before TV got so political. I was watching when the second plane hit the WTC.
Some things I don't understand, such as a business model that encourages the organization's decision makers to pay millions to someone to do something they've never done before in the hope that this new hire will be super good at it and make you more money than you're paying out. I stopped watching any morning TV sometime after 9/11 (used to turn on Imus in the Morning occasionally, which I'm assuming isn't even on anymore) so I don't know who's doing it and doing it well these days or why someone would decide that Megyn Kelly would be really good at doing this. Because it doesn't seem obvious to me. She's too...specific.
Bay Area Guy re insight
She has insight coming out of her, whatever.
RE: Fluffy, female time wasters.
That needs to be a tee shirt: Fluffy Female Time Waster.
Michael K pontificates...
I used to watch Good Morning America back before TV got so political. I was watching when the second plane hit the WTC.
Wow! I bet nobody else could've done that.
BTW, are those dark roots that I see?
I don't turn on the TV until bed-time. PBS is a great sleep aid.
Listening to the droning voices of shows like "How the Universe is Made" or some other whispery voice discussing the wild life in a jungle somewhere.....snoooze!
Daytime TV: I'm retired and work the company business from home so IF I wanted to watch daytime tv, I suppose I could. Why in the world would I? It is just mindless dreck.
We get up early...@ 5am. Watch some Fox Business channel. Maybe check our local station for some local news, weather etc. If something big is going on we may turn into one of the News Networks..maybe. The morning news shows on Fox are just embarrassingly stupid and there is zero chance that we would tune into MSNBC or CNN. Then the TV is off by about 7am. We get most of our news from the internet.
Mostly I have music going during the day , IF I am in the house. Either ITunes from my library of thousands of digital songs and albums. OR I will chose a music channel available through Direct TV. The classical channel is pretty nice. Then there is Pandora and I can make my own mix.
Daytime tv is a complete waste of time. Meagain Kelly has made a very big career mistake.
Prince Harry is fucking pretty much whomever he wants.
I'm trying to think how my life is going to be affected, even microscopically, by the success or failure of Megan Kelly? I'm trying.
Ms. Kelly is about to discover what Katie has learned.....people didn't watch
Fox because she was on, they watched Kelly because she was on Fox. Luckily for her she will make about 20 million a year to learn that lesson, of course it's NBC and couldn't happen to a more worthy group of clowns.
She reminds me of what happens whe Republicans who go "moderate" or when a conservative church panics and tries to pander to the SJWs.
Their former fans feel betrayed, and their prospective fans don't believe the transformation.
I remember her interviewing McConnell, and she just flat shut him down when he would not answer a straightforward question. Yep - I liked that Megyn - tough, fearless and intelligent. Now, she's swaddled in pink and is on Xanax.
Prince Harry met with Melania Trump, and he made the "hang loose" hand gesture with his hand inserted in his suit jacket for the entire photo shoot. He turned his body so that Melania couldn't see it and had a smug look on his face. I guess he was playing to Trump-hating Lefties at home. He's owes the Trumps a formal apology and deserves censure at home.
O'Reilly is making a guest appearance on Hannity tonight. I suspect Murdoch told his sons to cut the crap and this is a test of the water appearance. If O'Reilly still has what he had Fox might be bringing him back.
Kelly got a sweet pay deal. Bank it honey cause it isn't going to get renewed.
I feel the same. I hate being emotionally manipulated. Especially when the motivation seems so shallow.
Prince Harry met with Melania Trump....deserves censure at home
I suspect the Queen will not be amused.
Everybody--even Kelly--knew that NBC would set her up to fail. The big bucks ensured that Fox wouldn't have her. NBC knew that Lefties would never accept her after her stint on Fox. She was a write-off from the very start. Kelly must have known that staying with Fox was not an option either. She ruffled too many feathers. Perhaps she thinks she can return to Fox after Murdoch's commie kids have finished their re-tooling. The NBC bucks are guaranteed. She'll just have to wait until the contract expires before she can work for somebody else.
Nice breasts.
I've never heard anyone mention watching this kind of show. Do people watch these shows at home or are they designed specifically for waiting rooms?
It might be fun to watch the old style Megyn Kelly, based on clips people have posted of her online, on a morning show. Pointed questions, withering confrontation, dogged persistence, all in a morning show environment. It could be very entertaining.
Everybody--even Kelly--knew that NBC would set her up to fail.
Why of course. Everyone (and not just the smart people) knew that NBC would spend $20 million to set Kelly up to fail. The money was just sitting there in the money pile, waiting to be spent on set-ups and failure; how could NBC execs resist?
Earnie, when do you suppose Hillary's and Obama's books will justify their advances?
Same deal.
The dots denser below her breasts than above them make her boobs look bigger, imitating shading.
Megyn Kelly just doesn't seem like a warm person. She seems like the mom at school who just wouldn't like you. Who drops the kids off and doesn't really talk to the other moms except maybe the one mom whose husband works with hers.
So she doesn't really seem right for a morning tv show about loving other humans.
To be fair, Kathie Lee Gifford does not seem like a warm person, but she is her own special brand of train wreck. I won't watch her, either, but her train wreckism makes her less objectionable than Megyn Kelly's cold fish ism.
"Megyn Kelly just doesn't seem like a warm person." Careful. You are not telling a woman to appear more caring and empathetic, are you? Then again, Althouse might welcome it as confirmation of her women get-this-more easily thesis.
Every dollar these media people spend do not come out of their pockets. Some decisions are based not on the question "Will this make money?" but "Will this impress my friends?"
That's why they make all those anti-Bush movies that bomb at the box office, and pay Obama and the Clintons millions for their books. They get a reputation for being "edgy" and "controversial" and they can hang a picture with POTUS on their "I love me" wall.
This is why they make the deals that they do. They're playing with other people's money.
Kelly's greatest enemy on earth is Donald Trump, and now you're telling me NBC is spending its precious treasure to satisfy Trump's deepest desires? I guess the world truly is moved by dark and powerful forces.
how could NBC execs resist?
You're not very smart, are you, Earnest? Kelly was the ratings leader at Fox and NBC/MSNBC was in the toilet. Getting Kelly away from Fox opened up competition, allowing Rachel Maddow to finally get viewers and claim the top spot. The ad revenue change make it worthwhile. And the Kelly write off is tax deductible. CBS paid Rush Limbaugh big money for a TV show, then showed the episodes at 2AM or not at all, in many markets. Why'd do that?
And I used to like Megyn Kelly. What happened?
What happened is that success went to her head, and what she did on Fox became about her rather than about the story. It was "Look at me! Aren't I fabulous?" rather than "Watch me interrogate this dissembling politician." She had annoyed and alienated a large segment of her audience at Fox by the time she left.
Didn't watch. My TV is connected to my media server. Nothing else. But the image of Megan Kelly as the Bride knocked me off my chair — the Megan, the ice bitch cut now grown out into Marge, takes her comfy chair on the studio set to the applause of the handpicked audience. She smiles in appreciation, opens her mouth and "GEEK. AIYYYYEEEEE!"
You're not very smart, are you, Earnest?
I haven't owned a television since 1999, so I defer to your expert knowledge of this dying industry. At any moment a few hundred thousand people are watching cable television; it's equivalent to the number of Americans who are quilting or canning.
What happened? It's like they drained her of any intelligence or insight.
Television is an illusion, didn't you know that? William Shatner wasn't the dynamic and resourceful Captain Kirk, commander of the FTL starship Enterprise and boinker of alien bints from Acamar to Zubenelgenubi, a collision of scriptwriters, producers, directors, videographers, costume designers, makeup artists and perruquiers contrived to make him appear to be same. Just so with Megan Kelly. Her mistake was to think she made herself interesting and not the off-screen types at FoxNews. She left them behind and now we discover she's a bore. Too bad. Hubris strikes again.
...the ice bitch cut now grown out into Marge
... a Marge. A Marge, dammit.
Sometimes my fingers just refuse to type articles, definite or otherwise. It's like there's a Russian in me struggling to get out.
Was it "GEEK," or just "GEK?" I had to watch those last few minutes of The Bride of Frankenstein to make sure. After the soft moan of dawning consciousness, the Bride's first audible utterance was definitely "Gek." Short and to the point. Kinda like the typical on-air mannequin trying to sound like a serious journalist.
...a collision of scriptwriters, producers, directors...
I meant a coalition... but Safari decided collision was better. Come to think of it, that may be more accurate.
ALP said...
RE: Fluffy, female time wasters.
That needs to be a tee shirt: Fluffy Female Time Waster.
Or at least a tag.
It's weird how starving yourself sort of intensifies your face for the camera. That's how Brittney Murphy went from a sidekick to a lead in her movies.
Listening to the droning voices of shows like "How the Universe is Made" or some other whispery voice discussing the wild life in a jungle somewhere.....snoooze!
Yes - snooze. Works for me. If you cannot entertain me, at least lull me to sleep.
"Yep - I liked that Megyn - tough, fearless and intelligent."
That was the Megyn that Alies CREATED. She was tough, fearless, intelligent, because she had a PRODUCER writing her "tough, fearless" questions and guiding her through the entire interview.
All these talking heads have a producer off-camera telling them what to say. Many of them can talk on their own (Hannity, O'reilly, Maddow)but most of them need help.
Weekday TV before 5 PM is aimed almost exclusively at women. Its not just that they do almost all the watching, they do almost of buying.
And so you get perky blondes and funny lesbians. And some male co-hosts who come as Gay, Beta,and without any edge. Uncle Phil's.
The only exception would be Bryan Gumbel who had an edge, but he was black, so the Female audience was OK with it.
Now she's descended from the world of serious primetime political commentator to banal daytime chat, it just seems like she's given up.
She's hoping this will make her more well-liked, popular, and successful. I watched a couple of minutes and couldn't stand how insipid she seemed. I didn't care for her much on Fox--though I only saw her a few brief times--but she came across as serious about what she was doing. This is just piffle.
"Fluffy, female time-waster."
people are right. that could go on T-shirts and any number of picture captions.
Kelly is in way over her head. She was successful at Fox for occasionally getting into people's faces. In retrospect, she went after Trump as part of a strategy of elevating her career to the networks, but she does not have the talent to pull it off. No shame in that, but her interviews of Putin and Alex Jones were disastrous. She pretty much backstabbed her way to a morning show but does not fit the bill -- not that likable, which is what matters.
In two years, she will go Katie Couric and be reduced to ranting on the internet.
Robert Cook wrote: This is just piffle.
Superfluous. We know your comment was piffle. All of them are. Except for the ones that are claptrap.
Why is she doing a show in front of the Uncanny Valley version of New York City?
Quaestor -- why the umbrage at Cook? I would think you would agree that Kelly's NBC turn is indeed, piffle.
Unless you're MegYn's #1 fan?
I gotta give Kathy Lee Gifford some credit: she had some seriously "motorboat-able" juggs.
I also gotta admit I thought Kelly Ripa was a lot hotter when she was about 15-20 pounds heavier on whatever idiotic show she was on with Faith Ford. Today ... Famine victim.
Megyn Kelly is just a slightly smarter bimbo on TV than the other bimbos.
I used to like watching Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelley on FOX in the morning. She acted and looked like a normal person. I enjoyed her evening show at first. I liked the interviews about high profile trials and the lawyer interviews. I enjoyed that about Greta's show, as well. She then sported a more hard edged with slicked back hair and her clothing became more daring giving her an aggressive look. (Motherhood rebellion?) She had a great niche and blew it. Now from the pictures posted of her new show she is back to the girl next door look.
She has a voice like a truck driver's. A voice for print. Hard for a fairly pretty woman to be so unattractive.
Megyn who?
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