Fox News Star Megyn Kelly Inches Closer To Bill O’Reilly In Ratings
Megyn Kelly‘s interview with the Duggars didn’t go over very well in a lot of quarters. Even though NPR is a left-leaning organization that usually criticizes Fox News, their television critic Eric Deggans said what a lot of others thought about the interview.
“It seemed to be pretty much about helping the Duggars salvage their brand rather than getting to the bottom of what happened in this family. She wasn’t particularly incisive and she didn’t push the Duggars on issues that I think are at the heart of this — why they waited so long to go to law enforcement, why they took all these unofficial avenues to get their children help.”
The good news for Megyn Kelly is that she keeps getting close to taking talk show champion Bill O’Reilly in the ratings. When averaging ratings for this past Monday through Thursday night at Zap2it, Megyn Kelly attracted an average of 2.33 million viewers a night. Her biggest night was Wednesday night, where she interviewed the Duggars. Her show attracted 3.09 million viewers. Her lowest ratings night was Tuesday when she attracted 1.93 million viewers.
Bill O’Reilly didn’t let Kelly’s much-publicized interview with the Duggar family beat him in the overall ratings for last week. Mr. O’Reilly averaged 2.57 million viewers per night. He scored his biggest show on Monday night with 2.67 million viewers and the lowest on Tuesday night with 2.36 million. Of course, many would kill for Bill O’Reilly’s “lowest” ratings.
On Talk Show Death Row is CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who averaged just 530,000 viewers a night. Cooper’s biggest night was Monday with 559,000 viewers. On Thursday night, he achieved only 410,000 viewers, which is quite an embarrassment even by his standards.
Bill O’Reilly has remained the cable television news king for over 15 years, despite many controversies. This week, Mr. O’Reilly was criticized for calling out Hillary Clinton on what he considers the myth of income inequality. Fox News Insider quotes Mr. O’Reilly from his show.
“That is the play here – to convince Americans that market competition is bad, unfair, it’s a rigged deal. Sadly, that message is gaining currency.”
The Fox News star said that the vision that government should control the flow of money is very dangerous. Mr. O’Reilly often uses his show to discuss what he considers an overbearing government that’s out to punish people who work hard and reward others who don’t. However, O’Reilly usually has a guest that disagrees with his point of view — something other cable news personalities never dream of doing. Perhaps the fact that O’Reilly exposes viewers to different opinions is the reason his ratings are still so high.
[Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Variety]
