In a new interview with Variety, NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke took full credit for hiring Megyn Kelly away from Fox News but expressed regret over giving her a morning show on the network. “Megyn Kelly was a huge talent. She was at the wrong time of day,” he said. “In hindsight we shouldn’t have done it.” Kelly was taken off the air last October following her comments excusing blackface as not “racist.” Just this past week, NBC finalized her exit package, with one source confirming to The Daily Beast that the network had agreed to pay out the remaining $25-30 million left on her contract. Burke dispelled any notion that NBC News Chief Andy Lack was to blame for the Kelly debacle or the way he handled the sexual misconduct allegations against former Today show anchor Matt Lauer, saying, “I’m 100 percent behind Andy. When the drumbeat began of ‘You gotta fire this guy’—a lot of that was really unfair. Matt Lauer was a grenade that we didn’t know was a grenade. I was here seven years and I thought Matt Lauer was the greatest interviewer in news.”
