A week after NBC ended Megyn Kelly’s misery and pulled the initial run of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly at least two episodes sooner than planned, a Dateline rerun promptly got more viewers than Kelly’s last show.

According to Nielsen data, Sunday’s Dateline rerun got nearly four million total viewers (3.96 million) with a .6 rating in the key 18-49 demo. Kelly’s last show got 3.5 million viewers, up from 3.1 million total viewers two weeks before in the same time slot (7 p.m.) and 2.71 million total viewers the week before that in a different (9 p.m.) time slot. Kelly’s last show got a .5 rating in the key demo, which the Dateline rerun last night also beat.

As Breitbart News pointed out, “an NBC spinmeister claimed that Kelly’s show was going off the air” earlier than scheduled because Kelly apparently “needs to be ‘freed up to focus’ on her morning show. Translation: Kelly needs to do all she can to not ruin NBC’s crown jewel Today franchise. Network executives, who reportedly have been freaking out about Kelly’s poor ratings, are probably praying that Kelly simply does no more harm than she has already done in her short time at the network.”

Television executives have been wondering if Kelly’s Sunday show will even return after the football season as the show seemed to highlight Kelly’s vapidness in addition to numerous other substantive and stylistic shortcomings.

Breitbart News has been documenting Kelly’s disastrous ratings at the network, which may threaten the network’s crown jewel Today franchise that inexplicably hitched its star to Kelly’s wagon: