Brian Stelter: Megyn Kelly was ‘paid too much’

CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter said Megyn Kelly “was paid too much” money by NBC.

The former Fox News host came to NBC News from Fox News in 2017 and signed a three-year contract reportedly worth $69 million.

“She was paid too much,” Stelter told CNN “New Day” host Alisyn Camerota as they discussed Kelly, who appears to be on her way out from NBC following the controversy surrounding her comments that wearing blackface was not racist.

{mosads}Stelter said Kelly’s impending exit from the network was inevitable but “it’s all about the money now, it’s all about the details.”

He also said that other factors are contributing to what appears to be Kelly’s imminent exit. 

Camerota asked if NBC officials are using her comments about blackface as an excuse because they wanted to end the show.

“I think there is an element to that, for sure,” Stelter said. “There has been two years of back-biting and bitterness inside NBC about Megan Kelly.” 

“She gets hired from Fox, she’s treated as this all-star, she’s told she will get not one but two shows on the network, there was a lot of resentment,” he continued.

Some of the factors that explain Megyn Kelly’s impending exit from NBC:

— Lower than expected ratings
— Sharp elbows within NBC
— Offensive & awkward segments
— Tensions with management pic.twitter.com/MNDBVGIwwI

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 26, 2018

“The biggest factor here, as it almost always is in television, is ratings,” Stelter said.

“Her program had sky-high expectations and she never met those expectations so ultimately this show was going to end some day, perhaps at the end of this season, due to relatively low ratings, but then she steps in it by talking about blackface and that creates a scandal that NBC could not tolerate.”

Kelly came under fire this week for her comments during a Tuesday panel about Halloween costumes.

The host said dressing up in blackface was considered OK when she was growing up “as long as you were dressing like a character.”

Kelly apologized in a letter to NBC staff on Tuesday and with an on-air apology during her Wednesday show, but colleagues on the network have weighed in with biting criticism.

Longtime “Today” meteorologist Al Roker said the apology wasn’t good enough.

“The fact is, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the county,” Roker said.

Another anchor at NBC, Craig Melvin, also criticized Kelly’s remarks, saying they were “indefensible.”