Earlier this morning, Megyn Kelly placed a difficult call to a dear friend, Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox. During the summer, as the Roger Ailes sexual-harassment imbroglio turned Fox News into a hothouse of rumors and recriminations, Lachlan had served as something of a confidant to Kelly, who had been instrumental in Ailes’s ouster. (Ailes has consistently and vociferously denied all charges.) Lachlan and his brother, James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, had enlisted the law firm Paul, Weiss to help sanitize the culture of Fox News. Kelly, as their second-most-highly-rated anchor, appeared primed to replace her adversary Bill O’Reilly as the network’s most eminent star. As the Ailes scandal concluded at the end of the summer, the younger Murdochs even helped spearhead a major pre-emptive offer for Kelly, proposing a staggering new contract worth more than $20 million. The offer came with a request that Kelly decide quickly, preferably before she started her book tour in November.

Kelly, however, appeared to be operating on her own timetable. And despite numerous dinners with the Murdoch sons—still known throughout their father’s empire as “the Boys”—she blew past their desired deadline. Many assumed, nevertheless, that Kelly would still end up returning to Fox News after her contract expired in the summer of 2017. Despite her obvious talents, as I’ve previously reported, it seemed that few competitors were willing to pony up and surpass the Murdochs’ offer. One CNN insider told me this fall, “Of course we would love to have her,” before noting that poaching Kelly, given the likely cost, “is not something we are seriously considering.” One insider at ABC essentially reiterated the point: “I don’t believe anyone is pursuing her other than Fox at this point,” this person said.

But after the surprising election of Donald J. Trump, Kelly’s calculus seemed to change. The culture of white men that the Murdochs were eschewing appeared to be resurgent within Fox News, with Sean Hannity emerging as a veritable Trump whisperer and O’Reilly newly emboldened. All of a sudden, Kelly seemed to be testing the waters as never before. One signal of her openness, a person close to Kelly told me, was that money, which once seemed insurmountable, would now be less of an issue. Kelly, it seemed, was ready to explore life outside the Fox News bunker.

VIDEO: Megyn Kelly Asks 12 of Her Toughest Questions

Earlier this morning, as The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg first reported, Kelly made her decision official. She called Lachlan Murdoch to say that despite the $20-plus million offer that his company had put in front of her, and his personal involvement to keep her, she was decamping to NBC News. “He was lovely, disappointed, but couldn’t have been nicer,” a person close to Kelly told me. “He couldn’t have been more supportive.”

Kelly will remain on her show, The Kelly File, throughout the week, with her last day Friday, January 6, according to a Fox News spokesperson. “While I will greatly miss my colleagues at Fox, I am delighted to be joining the NBC News family and taking on a new challenge,” Kelly wrote on Facebook. “I remain deeply grateful to Fox News, to Rupert, Lachlan and James Murdoch, and especially to all of the FNC viewers, who have taught me so much about what really matters.” Rupert Murdoch issued a statement thanking Kelly for her 12 years at Fox News: “We hope she enjoys tremendous success in her career and wish her and her family all the best.”

Moments after the story broke, NBC followed with its own statement, which explained that Kelly “will become anchor of a new one-hour daytime program that she will develop closely with NBC News colleagues. The show will air Monday through Friday at a time to be announced in the coming months.” In addition, NBC said Kelly will anchor a Sunday-evening news-magazine show and will contribute to NBC’s breaking-news coverage, as well as political and special events.

The decision to leave Fox News was not money-driven, according to the person close to Kelly. Rather, it was made to “expand her professional and creative abilities,” the person added. “She has creative instincts and she wanted to stretch her wings a little bit.” The real key to Kelly’s decision, according to this person, was that NBC came to her with a blank slate, and asked her what she would like to do. “Everyone else came to her with an idea of what they wanted,” this person said. “NBC really wanted to hear what she wanted to do, and then they delivered it.”

Kelly’s move reshapes the landscape of television news in significant ways. NBC now employs two of the most expensive personalities in television news in Matt Lauer, who makes a reported $25 million a year, and Kelly, who is probably not making that much less than the Murdochs had offered. And Kelly, who has proclaimed that Santa Claus was white and talked about an anti-police “thug mentality” among African-American youth, must now take her brand of political analysis further to the center for her new morning network-news audience. One industry executive posited that part of Kelly’s appeal was that she appeared on Fox News, in the first place; the blonde and attractive lawyer, according to the executive, appealed to “old white men.” In daytime television, this person continued, “minority women make up a disproportionate part of that audience, and that audience is not Megyn Kelly’s audience.”

Meanwhile, Fox News is losing its most high-profile female star, and will be forced to cobble together a new prime-time lineup and fill the important nine P.M. slot between O’Reilly and Hannity. “Fox is in a full rebuild,” an industry executive told me. It remains to be seen how the network will restructure its prime-time lineup. (One rival industry executive suggested that Sandra Smith, currently a host of Fox’s Outnumbered, and an occasional replacement host for Kelly on The Kelly File, was a likely successor for Kelly’s slot. In addition to Smith, Fox News personalities such as Martha MacCallum, Trish Regan, and Shannon Bream are seen as possible successors.) Fox executives have often pointed out that the Fox formula works no matter who is in the anchor chair, but that assumption surely will be tested without Kelly. (The network also recently lost another major female talent, Greta Van Susteren, who is reportedly on her way to MSNBC.)

Outside of her daily show, Kelly is also launching into thorny territory. NBC attempted a prime-time Sunday-night show with Brian Williams, Rock Center, that was cancelled due to disappointing ratings. (Presumably NBC will use the lure of its Sunday Night Football, acquired after Rock Center went off the air, to help build Kelly’s audience.) Fox News may have thrived on competition, but NBC may not be any kinder. Kelly will now compete with Lauer, Lester Holt, and Savannah Guthrie (not to mention, perhaps, Chuck Todd and Joe Scarborough) for major interviews. But as the entire news ecosystem adjusts to the new Trump reality, Megyn Kelly may represent the new center.