Megyn Kelly is a tour de force in American journalism. Her daily podcast boasts several million subscribers on podcast platforms. She’s recently launched a morning briefing news segment in addition to her afternoon show. Two weeks ago, she announced she was expanding her platform into a video and audio podcast network called MK Media that will work with creators and journalists in the news and entertainment sphere.
The road was anything but easy.
Eight years after leaving Fox News, where she spent 15 years as one of the news organization’s most talented interviewers, Kelly has emerged as a relentless informer, researcher, and storyteller, as well as a prime example of how much the media has changed.
Kelly’s emergence as an industry leader, when many expected her to fade off after her stint at NBC, has come at the same time that legacy and cable news industry ratings are generally declining, with the exception of Fox, along with trust in legacy news in general.
Conversely, according to Backlinko, the podcast industry is booming with a projected 584.1 million worldwide listeners in 2025 and a forecast of 651.7 million by 2027.
When she started her first podcast, it was after she admittedly spent time “licking her wounds” in the aftermath of her leaving NBC News.
“I was full of despair and dejection about journalism in general,” Kelly said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I just thought I’d had two extremely negative experiences at the very tail end of Fox. And then the entire time at NBC, I was very unsure of whether I wanted to stay in this business at all.”
In fact, Kelly admitted that she didn’t know if high-profile legacy media was a good place to spend one’s life. “It was just so toxic, nasty, backstabbing, and destructive, truly destructive,” she said. “Especially at NBC. How could I go work someplace that was going to try to control my language on the gender issue, on the race issue? It took me a while to get there.”
Kelly said her journey back to journalism began by deciding where she could find a place to be her boldest self.
“I started to think, ‘Well, what would be smart?’” Kelly said. “It definitely would not be smart to go back to one of these institutions that won’t let me just be my full self. And that’s when Ben Shapiro called me and said, MK, you’ve got to consider the podcast space.”
Kelly admitted that working under a boss has never been her strongest suit.
“I’ve just always been extremely independent-minded. … I can’t stand unreasonable decisions, whether it’s in the line at TSA or while working for a boss of a news organization, so it just made sense at this point in my career, given where I was, that I wouldn’t go be somebody’s employee again,” she said. “It wasn’t exactly like I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was more like I can’t have a boss. I don’t do well with bosses.”
Kelly rolled out her first episode of The Megyn Kelly Show in the fall of 2020, several months after her probing interview with Tara Reade, the former Joe Biden staffer who accused the then-presidential candidate of sexually harassing her in the 1990s. Kelly used Instagram and YouTube to showcase the interview.
Kelly was off to the races.
By the fall of 2021, Kelly announced she would host an exclusive daily radio show on SiriusXM with subscribers getting access to a video version of the show. The morning news briefing starting this year is one of two new ventures she is very excited about.
The impetus for this programming came from Kelly’s observation that there were precious few options for anyone right-of-center looking for a quick news update.
“The Left lives for NPR while the Right really doesn’t have a lot of options,” she said.
“My main thought was, ‘Where will I find the time?’” she said. “‘I’m not sure if my team or I have the time to create the second show.’ But my producer, Steve Krakauer, said, ‘I think we can do it, MK. We just need to hire a second team.’”
And so they did.
Kelly said they did several weeks of draft scripts. What was supposed to be a light, 15-minute read is an hourslong project in part because of her self-admitted need to edit it.
“I have to put my own voice into it, and I have my own strong thoughts and questions about, ‘Well, why didn’t we answer this, and why wouldn’t we point this out, and we need to include that detail.’ … I have strong feelings on how to do the news if I’m going to be voicing it,” Kelly said. “So it is a little bit more work than I thought it would be.”
She tapes it in the late evening and it drops first thing every day at 6 a.m.
“It has been doing great,” she said. “I feel like not only is it serving us as a business entity, but I think it’s really doing a public service.”
Kelly followed the rollout of her morning news show with the announcement of MK Media. It will be a podcast network for video and audio shows, launching this month.
Kelly said she and her team had figured out, in general, how to get her own show seen and expand her audience.
“That’s been a five-year process amongst my team,” she said. “None of us came into this with podcasting experience or knowing exactly how to do this. It took a long time to actually grow the show. A long time.”
“My thought was just generally from having all these guests on my show whose opinions I find fascinating or whose personalities I adore,” she said for the reasoning behind the expansion. “I really see possibilities for them, so why shouldn’t I help others shortchange the learning process and get their voices out there faster and in a more ubiquitous way?”
“I’m not doing it for free, but we’ve struck deals where I’ll get a small percentage of the net income and I will pay for their production and for their promotion,” she said of the creators getting a big platform to promote their product. “So it works out for both of us.”
The platform gives many very talented people who do not have the expertise a well-produced show.
“After five years we have mastered all that,” she said. “So it’s basically a good and mutually beneficial quid pro quo. And I get the added benefit of knowing that I’m helping people I really believe in.”
The first shows are slated to be hosted by independent journalist Mark Halperin, columnist Maureen Callahan, and influencer and political commentator Link Lauren.
Kelly said what she loves about podcasting is the ability to discuss in-depth topics for longer than a few minutes. Case in point, her coverage of the Pete Hegseth rape allegations ahead of his confirmation as defense secretary.
“We looked at the complaint that woman filed, we poured through every line of it,” Kelly said. “I mean every line, one by one. And by the time we were done, it was very clear. In my opinion, this woman made the whole thing up, and we went into it very open-minded.”
“I haven’t spoken with Pete in years,” she said. “I had no dog in the hunt in saving him at that point at all. You can’t do that on cable news. When the Fani Willis texts broke that she had exchanged with Nathan Wade, same thing. We were the first to get those texts and we put them on the air.”
“I went through them one-by-one with Phil Holloway, this great lawyer in Atlanta, and we just blew that story wide open,” she said. “It took two hours.”
WHY DOESN’T NPR DEFUND ITSELF?
Kelly said it is the upper hand one has as an investigative journalist with a curious mind who has stopped caring about what people think of them.
“People love that,” Kelly said. “And they can put their podcast on 1.5 or 2.0. They can speed right through it. It’s just a totally different way of taking in information. And you can get in multiple sources in a day. If you want to hear about JFK, you might click on Glenn Beck or Joe Rogan. If you want to hear about straight news with a laugh, you might tune in to me. If you want to have just a belly laugh of the day, you might go to Andrew Schultz. There’s just so many options for you to get a balanced diet.”
