But the anticipated cultural shift went in the opposite direction. Rather than reward conservative personalities who could translate Trump’s appeal to the mainstream, NBC and MSNBC have enjoyed the success of anchors, such as Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who have cogently espoused a progressive political bent. Van Susteren is no longer on the air.

Kelly, for her part, appears to be finding her voice within this continuum. Rather than tack left or right politically, she has been on a full-throttle mission to revamp her image into someone with greater dimension than what she was able to showcase during Fox News’s prime-time lineup, where her staccato-like questions and litigious cross-examinations created viral moments. She spent the summer preparing for her main job on Today by, among other things, taking a five-day trip to meet 19 affiliate stations in six cities in August, and throwing out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game in Durham, North Carolina. And on one such stop to an affiliate in Chicago, she noted that she has enjoyed the transition to network news from cable because of her colleagues and because of “resources, resources, resources,” Kelly told The Chicago Tribune. “NBC, they expect excellence, and they are willing to devote the resources needed to achieve excellence, and nothing less than excellence will do.”

The amount of resources at Kelly’s disposal has irked some NBC colleagues, who feel she is sucking up too many of them at a time when a nonstop news cycle has exhausted her fellow NBC anchors and producers. Moreover, there is a lingering question of whether the resources will provide an adequate return on investment. In this regard, Kelly certainly has her supporters. Lack reportedly told affiliates before Kelly’s Sunday show launched that its success would not be measured in ratings. “It’s not going to be perfect on Day One, and we’re not going to be in first place on Day Two—but I’d rather be holding our cards than anyone else’s.” Indeed, the show was not in first place at all and was not infrequently in third place. “The measure of that show’s success is the journalism it produces and not ratings,” an NBC insider told me. “A Sunday night public-affairs show is not a ratings play for a network; it’s an influence play,” this person said.

Maybe so, but another executive with close ties to the industry took particular issue with the way NBC has managed Kelly since her arrival at the network, specifically citing the decision for her to interview Jones, who long asserted that Sandy Hook’s mass shooting was a hoax on his Infowars platform. “Journalistically, to interview him is defensible,” the executive with close ties to the industry said. “But she was going to need that exact demo—moms and minority women—who were the most obviously alienated demographics by her interview of him.” (The NBC insider countered that if the broader population had a general impression of Kelly, it would have come from her public battle with then-candidate Trump, not from the Jones interview.)

Kelly’s credibility with this audience is more important than ever. She will occupy a full hour of the lucrative Today franchise, which has only recently regained sustained top billing over Good Morning America in the most coveted demographic of the vicious morning-show wars. Several NBC insiders I spoke to professed excitement about the show; Kelly has described herself as a racehorse eager to get out of the gates. Still, there is lingering concern over whether Kelly, who can’t bother to feign interest in a once-in-a-generation eclipse, is made for the mornings. The atmosphere among some of the rank and file at NBC was summed up by one staffer who told me: “We are just bracing ourselves and hoping it is less bad than the reception of the Sunday show.”