Megyn Kelly scored two big wins on Tuesday night, drawing rave reviews from executives for her performance covering President Trump’s first State of the Union address as part of the team that powered NBC to a ratings win among broadcast networks.
‘Executives are really happy with her maiden voyage. She impressed everyone,’ an NBC insider told DailyMail.com.
‘She’s definitely expected to be a big fixture at all big political events moving forward, along with the rest of them.’
And Kelly also earned the praise of her fellow commentators, despite missing out on their group appearance earlier in the day on Meet the Press Daily.
That team, led by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, was comprised of Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, special correspondent Tom Brokaw, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Kelly.
Make way for Megyn: ‘Executives are really happy with her maiden voyage. She impressed everyone,’ said an NBC insider of Megyn Kelly’s State of the Union performance (Kelly above with Tom Brokaw and Lester Holt)
Anchors away: ‘She’s definitely expected to be a big fixture at all big political events moving forward, along with the rest of them,’ added the source (l to r: Kelly, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell and Holt)
‘Her colleagues on set were extremely pleased, and reported back to the bosses on how well it went,’ said the NBC insider.
A DC insider echoed that statement, saying that Mitchell made a point of telling Kelly ‘she was proud to be on with her for her special coverage debut.’
Another individual was on set for the filming also noted that the six had a good banter throughout the evening, both before, during and after the live coverage.
Kelly played critic as well last night, though she do had mostly praise for the man of the hour.
‘I think he did a fine job, but I think he’s going to tweet something and we’ll forget all about it. I mean, these things just don’t tend to be particularly memorable. And there wasn’t anything in this one that stood out to me as an exception to that rule,’ she said of President Trump.
Peacock: NBC beat all broadcast networks with 7.055 million viewers
She also noted how ‘subdued’ he was while addressing a joint session of Congress for the second time, though was quick to comment on his ‘distracting’ and strange to listen to’ habit of clapping for himself.
‘I thought it was a smart speech because he started with the personalized stories which were very effective, those personalized stories throughout the speech were very effective, and really made you feel something,’ noted Kelly.
When asked however what she expected ahead of President trump’s speech, Kelly responded: ‘I expect very little.’
President Trump return the favor and critique Kelly’s performance, which is likely a good thing.
The good news continued on Wednesday afternoon as well when Nielsen Media Research fast national data dropped and showed that NBC managed to beat ABC and CBS by averaging 7.055 million viewers from 9:01pm to 10:31pm Tuesday night.
That was better than all other broadcast networks, though it lagged far behind Kelly’s former employer, Fox News.
The cable ratings champ managed to wipe out all the competition with an impressive average of 11.5 million viewers.
That marked both the first time Fox News had beaten the broadcast networks and set a new record for total viewers to watch the annual address on a cable network.