Noah Oppenheim

The NBC News president on Megyn Kelly’s new show, Billy Bush, Trump and the Fox News mess: ‘I would never allow a culture like that to exist’

 

- Marisa Guthrie

Noah Oppenheim’s career began at Harvard in 2000, when Chris Matthews and Phil Griffin (then his producer) were marooned there because of a snowstorm. Waiting in the offices of The Harvard Crimson, “Phil read an article I wrote for the student newspaper,” recalls Oppenheim, 38, then a senior and the paper’s editorial chairman, “and ended up offering me a job on Hardball.” That led to work on Scarborough Country, before Oppenheim joined CNBC and Today. After decamping to L.A. for a stint with Reveille, he wrote 2016’s Jackie, but by the time it opened, he’d already been lured back to NBC to oversee Today. His success led NBC News chairman Andrew Lack to promote him to president of NBC News in February. Now the married father of three has oversight of its 2,000 employees and in the summer will be responsible for the most scrutinized anchor move in memory: when $18 million-a-year Megyn Kelly debuts her Sunday night newsmagazine. That will be followed by her new morning show, which in September will replace an hour of Today, though Oppenheim hasn’t decided whether it will run at 9 or 10 a.m. He invited THR to his minimalist office at 30 Rock.

What was NBC’s pitch to Megyn?

It wasn’t so much a pitch as a conversation. We talked to her about her vision for the next phase of her career and how we might partner with her.

She has built a reputation for being a tenacious interviewer. How will that translate to a morning show?

She is tough and fair; there’s a place for that. We’re not giving enough credit to the morning audience to think that they don’t want those things. Her background is as an attorney, she’s a mom of three, and she has had a lot of experiences that will be relatable to a huge cross section of the audience in the morning.