A US TV host who lost her chat show after suggesting it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween has reached an exit deal with the network that employed her.

NBC News announced its professional divorce agreement with Megyn Kelly late on Friday, ending its association with the former Fox News Channel star.

Terms were not officially disclosed, but CNN and NBC News reported that she will be paid in full for the time remaining on her contract, receiving a payout of up to $US30 million ($41 million).

Kelly was midway through a lucrative contract that paid her $US69 million ($95 million) over three years – an eye-popping sum even in the context of US television news.

She’s been off the air since October after her remarks on blackface, and exit negotiations had dragged for two months over the holidays.

Even before the controversial commentary, her future was considered limited at NBC News.

“The parties have resolved their differences, and Megyn Kelly is no longer an employee of NBC,” the network said.

Her tenure was also a failure for NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack, who lured her from Fox News Channel with the type of big-money contract that was once standard in television news but now is less so with financial constrictions and less viewership.

In a sense, Kelly was caught in a no-woman’s land: some at NBC were suspicious of her because of the Fox News background, while her former audience at Fox resented her for tough questioning of Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail.

While at Fox, her accusations of unwanted sexual advances by the network’s late chief executive, Roger Ailes, helped lead to his firing.

She made news at NBC when interviewing women who accused Donald Trump of inappropriate behaviour and spoke with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and others, as well as women who say they were harassed on Capitol Hill.

The episode with Trump accusers had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of her biggest audiences on the network.

But when those stories began to fade, Kelly had trouble attracting an audience in the soft-focus world of morning television.

She also briefly hosted an evening newsmagazine that didn’t catch on with viewers.

Kelly made a tearful apology to viewers following her blackface comments, but it proved to be her last appearance on NBC News.

“What is racist?” she said on the show.

“Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween.

“Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as a character.”

Critics accused her of ignoring the ugly history of minstrel shows and movies in which whites applied blackface to mock blacks.

-AAP