‘Megyn Kelly Today’ Ratings Not All Sunshine for NBC’s New Morning Host<br />Ms. Kelly has said that the show would be a mix of a talk show<br />and a news show, and it has moved in both directions, from typical morning fare — celebrity interviews, a segment involving an adorable crime-fighting dog — to gritty discussions of the O. J. Simpson and Menendez brothers cases<br />Ms. Kelly’s first “Today” hour, which featured as its main guests the cast of the<br />rebooted NBC sitcom “Will & Grace,” had an audience of 2.9 million viewers.<br />With its host reportedly making a salary of $17 million a year<br />and a new set having been constructed within NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, “Megyn Kelly Today” is more costly than the previous 9 a.m. segment of “Today.” Losing viewers, in the long run, would be a problem.<br />She addressed them at the end of her hour on Sept. 29, saying, “It’s been very exciting, it’s been so educational,<br />I’ve been just so delighted by the media response, which is really” — she shook her head before continuing — “no.”<br />After a breath, she added, “The viewer response has been awesome!”<br />As Ms. Kelly moved away from the sometimes prosecutorial persona she inhabited during much of her tenure at Fox, there were a few bumpy moments.<br />In her first week as a cheerful morning personality, Ms. Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, drew an average of 2.5 million viewers,<br />according to Nielsen, with 765,000 of them in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic prized by advertisers and network executives.
