When then-anchor Megyn Kelly was pushed out of NBC News in 2019, many insiders at the network thought her career as an anchor was probably over. Instead, Kelly is now almost as popular as ever.
According to viewership data collected by Kelly’s team for Semafor, Kelly’s show is now not only one of the most listened to shows on SiriusXM, but also one of the top 10 most popular podcasts in the country, with viewership exceeding that of some mainstream news channels on YouTube.
Kelly boasts that despite having only six employees, she has managed to achieve numbers that put her on par with traditional media accounts. The Megyn Kelly Show‘s YouTube channel, which has 2.3 million subscribers, had 116.8 million views in July – more views than the official channels of NBC News (78 million), CBS News (83 million), Sky News (87 million), BBC News (72 million) and CNBC (17 million).
“People are used to getting their news from me on camera, so it probably looks familiar,” Kelly said of her YouTube evolution. “I’m also half Italian, half Irish, so if you decide to watch the show, you’ll definitely pick up on the hand gestures and facial expressions that you might not always notice just by listening. With the news that’s out there these days, sometimes an eye roll, a slap on the forehead or a pen throw is absolutely necessary.”
In an interview with Semafor last year, Kelly said that after being pushed by NBC News, she met conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who suggested she do podcasts, but she was afraid she wouldn’t find an audience in digital media.
The post-cable independent route has given a second life to some other former personalities who found themselves without a home on linear TV. Former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan left the network to start his own publication, Zeteo, which has quickly gained a strong subscriber base and nearly 370,000 subscribers on YouTube since launching less than six months ago. While his time after CNN has been a little rockier, former anchor Don Lemon has proven he can still attract celebrity guests and audience attention with his interview-focused YouTube show.
