Did conservative commentator Candace Owens sign a $25 million deal with ABC for her own morning show that is "going to replace The View"? No, that's not true: A satirical website first made this claim in July 2024. A post on Facebook in August 2024 appears to be AI-generated and resembles the satirical website's article. Neither ABC nor Owens has announced an agreement for an Owens-hosted talk show, which would be widely reported news if it had occurred.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on August 9, 2024. It said:
Caпdace Oweпs Sigпs $25 Million Deal With ABC For A Morning Show, 'It's Going to Replace The View'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 18:15:40 2024 UTC)
A link in the post's comments takes users to the website FastViralNews.store (archived here) and an article titled, "Caпdace Oweпs Sigпs $25 Million Deal With ABC For A Morning Show, 'It's Going to Replace The View.'" The article used inconsistent typeface, a common feature of online scams that can be used to fool plagiarism detectors. The article opened:
In a moʋe that has sent 𝕤Һoᴄҡwaʋes through the teleʋision industry, ABC has announced the signing of conserʋatiʋe commentator Candace Owens for a new $25 million morning show. This new ʋenture is set to replace the long-standing daytime talk show 'The View,' a decision that reflects ABC's Ƅold strategy to reʋamp its programming and tap into new audience demographics.
The article claimed a person named Emily Watts, ABC's head of programming, released a statement about the deal, and "expresssed excitement about the new direction." But a Google search for that name (archived here) and title (archived here) yielded no matching results for an "Emily Watts" who is "ABC's head of programming."
Had Owens signed a $25 million deal with ABC, it would have been major news, but a search on ABC for these key words also returned no corroborating results, as can be seen below. 
(Source: abc.com screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 at 23:53:00 2024 UTC)
The website that published the fake article about Candace Owens also appears to use artificial intelligence to generate its content. Lead Stories ran the first two paragraphs of the article through the Hive AI-Generated Text Detection tool. The results stated that it is 74.7 percent likely that the text contained AI-generated text, as shown in the screenshot below:
(Source: Fast Viral News website screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 18:20:14 2024 UTC)
The article is quite similar to an article published on the satirical website SpaceXMania (archived here) in July 2024. It was titled, "Breaking: Candace Owens to Headline New ABC Morning Show, Replacing The View." For its satire, SpaceXMania also cited an "Emily Watts," who had quotes similar to those seen in the FastViralNews.store article.
The article on SpaceXMania that made the claim is labeled as "Satire," as seen in the top left-hand corner of the screenshot below:
(Source: SpaceXMania screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 18:23:13 2024 UTC)
SpaceXMania's About Us page (archived here) explains that the website publishes satirical content:
Welcome to our website, owned and operated by Funky Productions LLC. We are a team of writers and editors based in New York, USA. Our mission? To bring you the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire, all rolled into one crazy concoction that orbits around Elon Musk and everything that's lighting up the viral/trending charts.
Lead Stories contacted ABC for comment about the Owens claim and will update this fact check as appropriate if a response is received.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Candace Owens can be found here.
