’19 Kids And Counting’: Megyn Kelly Compares Duggar Family Chats To Caitlyn Jenner Interview

19 Kids and Counting fans still don’t know whether the Duggars’ Fox News interviews helped or hurt their chances of keeping their TLC series, but Megyn Kelly’s sit-downs with four members of the Duggar family did help one person score more airtime. And now that person is hoping to chat with Caitlyn Jenner.

According to Variety, the powers-that-be at Fox News were so impressed with Megyn Kelly’s interviews with the 19 Kids and Counting stars that they decided to give The Kelly File host her own series of primetime specials. The one-hour shows will begin airing sometime next year, and they’ll feature Kelly interviewing various celebrities, politicians, and other newsmakers. Kelly revealed that some of her top choices for interviewees are Caitlyn Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, Josh Duggar didn’t make her shortlist.

Megyn Kelly’s interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar scored 3.1 million viewers, and many of these viewers were likely 19 Kids and Counting fans. They tuned in to hear the reality show stars’ own accounts of how they felt and what actions they took after finding out that their son, Josh Duggar, had sexually molested four of his sisters. Megyn also interviewed two of Josh’s victims, Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald. Their interview aired two days later, and Deadline reports that it drew 2.2 million viewers.

These ratings likely played a part in the decision to give Megyn her own Barbara Walters-style specials. During an interview with Variety, the Fox News host compared her chats with the 19 Kids and Counting stars to Diane Sawyer’s Caitlyn Jenner special. According to Entertainment Weekly, Sawyer’s ABC interview with Jenner attracted 16.9 million eyeballs.

“In 14.5 hours, we had nothing and then we had what really was a highly produced beautiful broadcast that you could air on network TV any night of the week. Diane Sawyer had two months for the Bruce Jenner special. And if I dare say it, it did not look any better than what we did. I was very proud of my team.”

As the Inquisitr previously reported, critics weren’t quite as impressed with the Duggar family interviews. Kelly was blasted for being too sympathetic toward Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, and some critics thought it almost seemed as though she was actually trying to help the 19 Kids and Counting stars save their show. However, playing softball ended up benefiting Kelly in the end.

Unfortunately for the Duggars, TLC wasn’t convinced that Kelly’s interviews did anything to improve the family’s struggling image — the network still hasn’t revealed whether 19 Kids and Counting is going to be cancelled. According to Adweek, a TLC insider said that network execs didn’t rush to make a cancellation announcement in the wake of the Josh Duggar molestation scandal because they’re “being respectful of people that they’ve worked with for a long time.”

The Duggar family’s absence isn’t hurting TLC’s ratings. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the network actually saw a jump in ratings after it announced that it was pulling 19 Kids and Counting reruns from its schedule. So while Megyn Kelly’s future on TV is looking very bright, the Duggars’ chances of staying on the air seem to be steadily decreasing.

[Image credit: TLC]