Did conservative talk show hosts Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens sign a $400 million deal with CBS for a morning show to rival "The View," as posts on social media claimed? No, that's not true: This first appeared on a website that publishes made-up content. The article had two tiny satire disclaimers just below the headline.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) on the Esspots website on September 26, 2024, under the title "Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens Sign $400 Million Deal with CBS for Morning Show to Rival 'The View.'" The article began:
In a move that has left both fans and critics alike buzzing, Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens have reportedly inked a jaw-dropping $400 million deal with CBS to host a new morning show set to directly rival ABC's The View. The deal, which is already being touted as one of the biggest in television history, marks a bold new chapter in daytime TV--one where conservative voices will take center stage and shake up the status quo.
This is how the article looked at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: Esspots screenshot taken Mon Sept 30 21:51:00 2025 UTC)
The article about the purported deal is labeled "SATIRE." The word appears twice among the topic tags below the headline, as seen in the screenshot above.
Esspots' About Us page (archived here) calls its stories "fake news":
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America. Our team of writers and editors is dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest in fake news and absurdity, all with a healthy dose of humor and satire.
Some social media users have reposted Esspots' claim about the purported deal without noting its satirical intent (here, here, here and here, for example).
For example:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot taken Tue Oct 1 20:18:30 2024 UTC)
One of the images above was taken from a post on Facebook posted by SpaceX Fanclub, which also included the disclaimer that "This is satire." Esspots is a subsidiary of SpaceX Fanclub. A link in the post directed users to the Esspots article, as shown below:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Tue Oct 1 12:27:42 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories ran the text of the Esspots article through the AI-detecting program Hive Moderation, which determined the article was 92.3 percent "likely to contain AI Generated Text."
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken Tue Oct 1 20:30:01 2024 UTC)
"The Hive" is a frequent target for false claims. In August 2024, Lead Stories debunked another claim that Candace Owens would start a morning show on ABC to replace "The Hive." Other Lead Stories fact checks about claims related to entertainment can be read here.
