• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 3, 2017

Apparently unsatisfied with merely meddling in our election, Vladimir Putin is now positioning himself to play a disruptive role in our network news wars as well.

How? By agreeing to sit for an interview to be conducted by rising NBC News star Megyn Kelly. According to reports, this interview will take place next month during some sort of three-day economic forum in St. Petersburg. 

Kelly will reportedly conduct this interview onstage before an audience at the forum. How it will be used on NBC has not yet been reported, but the interview was reportedly arranged by NBC News Chairman Andy Lack, who is kind of a strongman himself.

Some of the stories suggest that this big “get” is a slap in the face to some of NBC’s other prominent news personalities such as Matt Lauer or Lester Holt. However, if Vladimir Putin had a say in the matter -- as he probably did -- perhaps it was he who chose Megyn over the men.

In so doing, how much do you want to bet that wily Vladimir was knowingly seeking to sow dissension in the NBC News ranks? Maybe he’ll even try to rattle Megyn by doing this interview shirtless.

She’s a tough cookie, though, and won’t rattle easily, given her years of service at Fox News Channel. Powerful men walking around shirtless? Been there, done that.

This week, Megyn is suddenly back in the news after an absence of several months from the public consciousness, ever since the news broke just after New Year’s Day that she had made herself a sweet deal with NBC.

She may have been contractually obligated to maintain a low profile up until now, but that time frame appears to be over. As of the other day, she apparently began coming to the office at NBC and tweeted how nice it was to meet her new colleagues. 

She also found herself inserted in the various stories about Ryan Seacrest joining Kelly Ripa on “Live With Kelly [now “and Ryan”].” No sooner had Kelly Ripa announced Seacrest as her new co-host on Monday, but stories began to circulate that NBC News was quietly confirming that Megyn would take over the 9-10 a.m. hour of “The Today Show” in September.

It’s a pretty safe bet that NBC News put that story out to dilute the attention being paid to Kelly and Ryan. If, by chance, NBC News leakers had nothing to do with it, then they should have, because it was a good strategy.

So now, the careful stage-managing of the Megyn Kelly era at NBC News is underway. They are even reportedly devising a news-magazine show to feature Megyn that will go up against “60 Minutes” on Sunday nights. 

This has been tried time and time again over the years, but never to the detriment of “60 Minutes.” To its credit, NBC News is not going around bragging that Megyn Kelly is a new David hired to slay the “60 Minutes” Goliath since that is not likely to happen.

The real challenge for NBC News is in turning Kelly into a real newsperson. On Fox News Channel, she became successful as the host of “The Kelly File” precisely because she was not a cookie-cutter network news personality.

Instead, she was this fresh face who asked great questions, pulled no punches and just seemed to play herself. That show she had on Fox News was a great environment for her, which is why it is surprising to some that NBC News isn’t simply planning to put her on MSNBC in prime time.

It has been suggested that Megyn doesn’t want to work the evening shift anymore, and she went with NBC because the network offered her the opportunity to readjust her working hours to the daytime.

However, she’ll make much less of a splash at 9 a.m. than she did at 9 p.m. The two time periods have different audiences. It is difficult to imagine many people who watched her at 9 p.m. following her to 9 in the morning. Such viewers would have to upend their own days to do so, and that’s not likely.

And for morning viewers, she just might be shaping up as the high-priced news talent who is displacing Al Roker, although it isn’t known whether he will play a role in the new “Megyn Kelly Today Show Goodtime Hour” (as at least one TV columnist has begun referring to the show).

However, it’s “early days” (as the Brits say) in the Megyn Kelly-NBC saga. Stay tuned for more, live from St. Petersburg.