Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly are fighting for the better ratings with major primetime news on Fox News, and Kelly is finally coming out on top.
O'Reilly, 65, has pretty much always been on top, but he's had some competition along the way, and that competition has mainly been Kelly, 44. Kelly was ahead of O'Reilly in the ratings collected for the first week of July, according to The Hollywood Reporter. For the adult demographic ages 25-54, Kellys' "The Kelly File" averaged 458,000 viewers, while O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" came in a close second with an average of 431,000 viewers.
O'Reilly's 8 p.m. slot has been number one across all of cable news for some time now, besides the one other time Kelly was No. 1 in June. Now, Kelly has scored the top slot for her second month since she moved to primetime in 2013.
When it comes down to total viewers of all ages, O'Reilly was still on top with 2.5 million, but Kelly was close behind with 2.2 million.
"The Kelly File" will continue to fight for the top spot as she has expanded her job description for 2016, according to Variety. She will have a series of new specials on primetime with a ton of celebrities and athletes that she thinks will be a huge hit. They're even calling her the next Barbara Walters. It also doesn't hurt that she was the one who had the first exclusive interview with the Duggars after the whole molestation scandal, which was a huge deal.
"Barbara Walters has retired. Diane Sawyer has left her anchor role," she told Variety in an interview. "Oprah has moved to the OWN Network and is doing different things now. So why not me?"
Fox News' chief executive Roger Ailes also has nothing but good things to say about Kelly's success and talent. He told Variety in an interview that he thinks "she's a natural."
"Megyn is so good today that there is no interview I would not want her to do," he continued to say. "She can handle human interest and cultural change. I'm very comfortable with her and we intend to look for other big things to do."
