It wasn’t a press release. It wasn’t a denial. But when the response came, it didn’t just stir the headlines — it cracked open a bigger question. The spotlight’s shifting, but the real story isn’t who’s stepping in… it’s why the buzz won’t die down

Megyn Kelly denied having a top secret screentest at CBS News ahead of a possible network TV comeback.

Veteran media reporter Bernard Goldberg made the astonishing allegation in a podcast for his Substack platform, No BS Zone.

He said: ‘By the way, here’s something I’m revealing that nobody knows: a certain person whose name — I’ll tell you the name in a second — a certain famous person in the media was at CBS News the other day, doing what I’m told was a screen test. Meaning, seeing how it works on camera.’

His co-host Professor John A. Daly guessed former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly.

But Goldberg enlightened him, saying: ‘No, I would’ve guessed that too. No, Megyn Kelly.

‘Megyn Kelly was at CBS News the other day. You heard it here, you’re not going to hear it anyplace else.’

Kelly has denied the reports about her TV return, writing on X: ‘Literally not one word of this is true.

‘Was not at cbs, did not have a screen test, am not going to cbs, and have ZERO desire to leave what I am doing now and join the sinking ship of broadcast news.’

Any return to network TV would be an incredible victory for Kelly, 54, who was forced out of NBC News in 2019 after an on-air comment about blackface.

Kelly was poached by the Peacock network from Fox News, where she hosted a hit show called The Kelly File between 2004 and 2017.

Since her exit from NBC with a rumored $69 million payout, Kelly has made a huge success of her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show.

She has become an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump’s administration and regularly takes on thorny culture wars topics that many legacy publications still hesitate to cover.

The Daily Mail has contacted Kelly for comment.

Like many legacy outlets, CBS News gained an increasing reputation for wokeness in recent years.

But new owner David Ellison appears keen to redress that balance.

He is said to be on the verge of buying journalist Bari Weiss’s The Free Press news website and installing herself as a senior executive at CBS News.

Weiss spectacularly resigned from The New York Times in 2021 after claiming the paper had become a nest of woke vipers who were skewing its coverage on major issues to the left.

While her views are more centrist than Kelly’s, Weiss has also made a huge success of her independent outlet by unflinchingly tackling topics including DEI and transgenderism.