For all of the back-and-forth and ugliness, in the end, the ratings for Megyn Kelly’s big Alex Jones interview ended up being as tepid as the interview itself. Deadline reports that just 3.5 million viewers tuned in to this week’s episode of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, in which Kelly was to grill the extremist far-right radio show host over his conspiracy theories claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and that the grieving families were actors.
Leading up to the interview, NBC dealt with advertiser backlash, threats of legal action from Sandy Hook families, and the local NBC-owned Newtown station even refusing to air the interview, period. Yet after all that controversy, the interview tied for third in the ratings with a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos, and was beaten by Fox’s U.S. Open Golf Championship coverage and a rerun of CBS’s 60 Minutes, which came in second.
It seems like a lot of headache on NBC’s part for very little return, and unfortunately for Kelly, the ratings flop apparently seems to be part of a pattern.
About 3.6 million viewers had watched Kelly’s second Sunday Night broadcast the previous week. And that had been a steep slide from the 6.1 million who tuned in for her NBC premiere, when she had interviewed Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. And that premiere, while a big crowd compared to her primetime average on Fox News Channel, was so-so for broadcast especially considering that big “get.”
As The Hill points out, Kelly departed Fox News in January to sign with NBC for a reported $17 million per year.