NBC News’s Megyn Kelly is making a swift tumble from the upper reaches of American television. In a crisis precipitated by her pro-blackface remarks on Tuesday morning, the morning host appears ready to split with her employer, if she hasn’t already done so. She did not tape a live edition of “Megyn Kelly Today” on Thursday morning, as the network aired a rerun: “Happy Friday,” she said.

But maybe Kelly wasn’t all that to begin with.

After NBC hired her to do a bunch of things — a morning show, a Sunday night newsmagazine, other stuff — Chairman Andy Lack said, “She is a great journalist, I didn’t invest in her because of her ‘star power,’ Megyn Kelly is a serious journalist, her work on Fox commanded attention because of who she was interviewing, how she was interviewing them, and the information she was getting every night on that broadcast. She wanted to do a broadcast with broader audiences that only we on a broadcast platform could provide.”