Megyn Kelly said there’s no redemption for ratings-challenged cable news channel CNN because the network has “already told half the country that they hate them.”“[In] 2015, I liked CNN a lot,” Kelly said on her Friday podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show,” which streams live on SiriusXM.Kelly told CNN commentator Mary Katharine Ham, who recently claimed she was “quiet suspended” by the network for her criticism of its handling of the Jeffrey Toobin saga, that she would often watch CNN to prepare for hosting duties at her network at the time, Fox News, when she anchored the nightly show “The Kelly File.”But she said the network “turned” at around that time and became too partisan.“They’re trying to turn things around right now,” Kelly told Ham. “People ask me all the time: Do you think CNN can be saved? Now they have new management and new ownership [and] I think a new commitment to try to win back some Republican viewers.”“Personally, I think it’s too late,” Kelly added. “They’ve already told half the country that they hate them.”The Post has sought comment from CNN.Ham recalled that CNN was “fun” when she first arrived as a commentator at the network in 2016.“It was a good time,” Ham said of her initial experience at the network. “I felt like we were presenting all the possible takes, including [those from] Trump-critical conservatives, which I was more on the side of, and Trump-favorable conservatives.”“We were fighting the good fight,” Ham recalled, adding that then-network boss Jeff Zucker “was giving billions of dollars of free air time to Donald Trump.”But after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Zucker decided that “now we have to be part of rectifying the situation,” according to Ham.Ham said that “the new folks” in charge at the network “are trying to bring in people who understand this other part of the country that many people on air in national news media just don’t have contact with.”CNN has been a network in flux since last year, when it fired primetime star Chris Cuomo after it was learned that he helped his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, craft communications strategy in the face of sexual harassment allegations.Months after Cuomo’s dismissal, his then-boss, Zucker, resigned after it was learned that he was carrying on a consensual relationship with his subordinate, chief marketing officer Allison Gollust.One of Zucker’s pet projects, the streaming service CNN+, was shuttered less than a month after its launch — one of the key cost-cutting decisions made by the network’s new parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.Zucker’s successor, Chris Licht, has made several high-profile changes in an effort to boost ratings and change the perception that the network is a tool of the left.The network fired Brian Stelter, the media reporter and former host of “Reliable Sources” who was a frequent target of right-leaning critics who accused him of being too partisan.CNN has reshuffled its lineup, moving Don Lemon out of his nightly two-hour slot and shifting him to mornings alongside White House reporter Kaitlan Collins and anchor Poppy Harlow.Cuomo’s spot has been filled by Jake Tapper while Alisyn Camerota and Laura Coates are helming hourlong shows to fill the void left by Lemon.Despite the changes, CNN continues to lag in the ratings race behind first-place Fox News and left-leaning Comcast-owned MSNBC.Fox News is a subsidiary of Fox Corporation, the corporate sister of The Post’s parent company, News Corp.
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