Megyn Kelly announced a major career move this week:
She is leaving Fox News and has signed a multi-year contract with NBC.
The decision has sent reverberations around the news world, with Tucker Carlson set to take over Kelly’s coveted time slot on cable later this year and many viewers wondering:
Where, exactly, will Kelly end up on the NBC schedule?
Moreover, due to a bombshell People Magazine report, might fans of Days of Our Lives have a reason to be concerned?
An insider close to the popular soap opera tells the publication that multiple Days of Our Lives cast members have been told that the series will go off the air after 2017.
The program – which debuted WAY back on November 8, 1965 and which has aired nearly every weekday since then – has been running on a year-to-year contractual basis for awhile now.
But no deal is in place beyond the next 12 months.
The source tells People that executives at the daytime drama have given some important employees an indication that their days are numbered.
“Basically, we’ve heard that there won’t be a Days in 2018,” says this source, who claims to have close knowledge of the situation.
Days of Our Lives recently celebrated its 51st anniversary.
Crazy, huh? And here we were, thinking Grey’s Anatomy has been on the air for a long time!
But what does all of this have to do with Kelly?
In confirming her role, the soon-to-be-ex Fox News anchor said she will contribute to breaking news on her new network, while also hosting a Sunday evening program and some kind of Monday through Friday show.
It is the timeslot for the latter that is at question here.
Neither Kelly nor NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack has said when this daytime news and discussion program will actually air.
In many markets across the nation, Days of Our Lives occupies in the 1–2 p.m. hour, which could be prime small screen real estate for a potential series hosted by Kelly.
There’s precedent for this kind of shake-up, too.
ABC made major headlines when it canceled long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live in 2011 to make room for daytime talk shows The Chew and the short-lived The Revolution.
ABC also shifted General Hospital from its time slot in 2012 to because it wanted Katie Couric‘s daytime talk show, Katie, to air at that time.
Kelly bid goodbye to fans of The Kelly File this week, although her contract with Fox News runs through July.
She may have negotiated her way out of it, but she has a six-month non-compete clause as part of that contract.
This would mean Kelly can’t actually appear on another network until 2018.
And that, of course, would coincide with when the Days of Our Lives contract is also over.
“This was a tough decision for me because I love this show, our staff, my crew, our colleagues here at Fox and you, all of you,” Kelly says in the above clip.
She added that she will miss “those who write me the lovely handwritten notes asking about my kids and even those who very rarely complain on Twitter about our coverage after a show or a presidential debate.”
That was meant as a joke, of course.
Not no Days of Our Lives fan will be laughing if Kelly really does help kick this soap opera off the air.
