# Elon Musk Stuns Wall Street and Hollywood with $10B ABC Purchase — Cancels *The View* Within Hours: “We’re Done with Divisive Daytime TV”

**Los Angeles, CA — November 6, 2025** — In a move that detonated across the financial and entertainment worlds like a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, Elon Reeve Musk, the 54-year-old polymath behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and xAI, has acquired the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in a jaw-dropping **$10 billion all-cash deal**—and before the ink was dry on the contracts, he made his first seismic decision: **canceling *The View* on the spot**. The announcement, delivered personally by Musk in a company-wide Zoom call at 3:17 p.m. PT, left executives stunned, hosts speechless, and social media ablaze. “We’re done with divisive daytime television,” Musk declared, his voice calm but unyielding as he addressed hundreds of shell-shocked employees from a Tesla Cybertruck parked outside ABC’s Burbank headquarters. “It’s time to build something smarter, more balanced, and actually worth watching.” Within minutes, Musk confirmed the axe via X: **“Effective immediately, The View has been canceled. You’re welcome.”** The post rocketed past **100 million impressions in under an hour**, igniting a firestorm of celebration, outrage, and speculation about what comes next for America’s third-largest broadcast network now under the control of the world’s most unpredictable billionaire.

The acquisition itself was a masterstroke of stealth and speed. Sources close to the deal—speaking on condition of anonymity due to NDAs—revealed that Musk began quietly amassing ABC shares through a web of shell companies in early 2025, exploiting a loophole in Disney’s divestiture strategy after the media giant spun off its linear TV assets to focus on streaming. Disney, battered by cord-cutting (losing 12 million linear subscribers since 2022) and a $60 billion debt load, had been shopping ABC since March, with rumored suitors including Paramount, Nexstar, and even Saudi PIF. But Musk—fresh off a $44 billion Twitter purchase in 2022 and a $100 billion valuation for xAI—swooped in with an all-cash offer that closed in **48 hours**, outbidding competitors by 25%. “He didn’t negotiate,” one Disney board member told *The Hollywood Reporter*. “He just said, ‘Here’s $10 billion. Take it or I walk.’ They took it.” The deal, finalized at 11:59 p.m. PT on November 5, includes ABC’s 240 affiliates, eight owned-and-operated stations (including WABC in New York and KABC in Los Angeles), the ABC News division, and the entire daytime and primetime slate—*except*, now, *The View*.

Musk’s first act as owner was swift and surgical. At 3:00 p.m. PT, ABC president Kim Godwin was summoned to a conference room where Musk—flanked by X CEO Linda Yaccarino and xAI chief scientist Igor Babuschkin—delivered the news. “Kim, you’ve done great work, but the era of scream-fests disguised as discourse is over,” he reportedly said. Godwin, visibly shaken, was offered a golden parachute and a role consulting on “AI-driven news integrity.” By 3:17 p.m., the Zoom call went live to all 3,200 ABC employees. Musk, wearing a black “Occupy Mars” T-shirt under a blazer, laid out his vision: **“ABC will become the first neural-network-optimized broadcast network—real-time fact-checking, viewer-driven content, and zero tolerance for performative outrage.”** He then dropped the bomb: “Effective immediately, *The View* is canceled. The set will be repurposed for a new show: *The Truth*—live, unfiltered, and powered by Grok.” The call ended abruptly as cheers erupted from some staffers and gasps from others.

*The View*, ABC’s 28-year-old daytime juggernaut, had been a cultural institution—and a lightning rod. Launched in 1997 by Barbara Walters, it averaged **2.4 million viewers daily** in 2025, down from its 2008 peak of 4.1 million but still the #1 daytime talk show among women 25–54. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Ana Navarro, the program had become synonymous with fiery political debates, celebrity gossip, and viral moments—like Behar’s 2024 on-air meltdown over Trump’s reelection or Goldberg’s tearful defense of free speech post-cancellation threats. But it was also a frequent target of conservative ire, with #CancelTheView trending 47 times since 2020. Musk, long a critic of “woke media,” had mocked the show on X as recently as October: “*The View* is to journalism what a Tesla crash test is to safety—predictable failure.”

The cancellation was immediate and total. By 4:00 p.m., the *The View* set—famous for its circular table and audience bleachers—was being dismantled. Crews in xAI-branded hard hats wheeled out the iconic chairs as stunned PAs whispered about severance packages. Whoopi Goldberg, reached by phone en route to a Broadway matinee, told *Variety*: “I’ve been fired before, but never mid-season by a guy who thinks he’s Tony Stark. Good luck replacing 28 years of history with a chatbot.” Joy Behar, live-tweeting from her Upper West Side apartment, posted: “Elon just canceled free speech on daytime TV. Irony is dead.” Sunny Hostin announced plans to launch a podcast, *The Real View*, on Substack, while Alyssa Farah Griffin—Trump’s former comms director—hinted at a Fox News pivot: “Maybe now I can say what I actually think.”

Musk’s X post—“Effective immediately, The View has been canceled. You’re welcome.”—became the most engaged tweet in platform history, surpassing his 2022 “I bought Twitter” announcement. By 6:00 p.m., it had **250 million views**, **8 million likes**, and **1.2 million retweets**. #ThankYouElon trended #1 globally, driven by MAGA influencers and Gen Z conservatives who flooded comment sections with memes of Musk as Thanos snapping *The View* out of existence. Celebrities weighed in: Roseanne Barr posted a video toasting with champagne—“Finally, a man with balls!”—while Alyssa Milano launched #SaveTheView, raising $1.8 million for the hosts’ legal funds in six hours. Wall Street reacted with frenzy: Disney stock jumped 7% on the cash infusion, while Tesla dipped 3% on fears of Musk overextension. Analysts at Morgan Stanley called it “the most audacious media power play since Murdoch bought Fox.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger, in a terse statement, said: “We wish Elon success in his bold new direction.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump ally, fast-tracked approval, citing “innovation in broadcasting.” But critics warned of monopoly: With Musk now controlling ABC, X, and Starlink’s global broadband, one man holds unprecedented sway over information flow.

As Burbank’s sunset painted the sky Tesla-orange, Musk stood atop the dismantled *The View* set, holding a sledgehammer. “This,” he said, gesturing to the wreckage, “was the old media. Tomorrow, we build the future.” Whether that future is a golden age of truth or a dystopian echo chamber remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: In less than 24 hours, Elon Musk didn’t just buy a network—he **rewrote the script**. And America, love him or loathe him, is watching.