A Vacation Hasn’t Stopped Advertisers from Fleeing Glenn Beck

Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:08 pm

To See President Biden's 5 Best Jokes At The White House Correspondents Dinner visit The Daily.

In response to the boycott campaign applied to Glenn Beck’s advertisers after the host called President Obama a racist by Color of Change, Fox News tried to cool things off by sending the controversial host on vacation. The result is that 16 more advertisers left Beck’s show while he was gone, which means that the strategy was a complete failure.

Here is a list of the 16 new companies who dropped Beck, Airware Inc. (makers of Brez anti-snoring aids), Ancestry.com, AT&T, Blaine Labs Inc., Campbell Soup Company, Clorox, Ditech, The Elations Company, Experian (creator of FreeCreditReport.com), Farmers Insurance Group, Johnson & Johnson (makers of Tylenol), Lowe’s, NutriSystem, Sprint, The UPS Store and Verizon Wireless. If you watch much television, these are some very familiar companies and brands.

They join a list of previous advertisers that includes, Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank (a unit of GMAC Financial Services), Best Buy, Broadview Security, ConAgra, CVS, GEICO, Lawyers.com, Men’s Wearhouse, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, RadioShack, Re-Bath, Roche, SC Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Sargento, State Farm Insurance, Travelocity and Wal-Mart.

It should be noted that many of the companies on this list have continued to advertise with Fox News, but will no longer advertise on Glenn Beck’s program. The strategy of using Beck’s vacation last week to cool things off has been a total failure, as the list of advertisers who have left his show has almost doubled.

Color of Change is the organizer of this boycott, and they deserve credit for their effectiveness. Of course they have had a huge assist from Beck himself. His comments about Obama and race were so stupid they were offensive. I have a hunch that many of these advertisers were already a little skittish about Beck, so the boycott provided an opening for them to leave, without justifying their departure from such a highly rated program.

Fox News has been confronted with something that they don’t know how to handle. They are hanging on and hoping that this will die down, but with Beck’s show now featuring Extenze and Viagra type ads, the Color of Change boycott has taken its toll. On his first day back, Beck was still being himself, but treading carefully on his radio and TV show, but if advertisers keep leaving, I suspect that FNC will continue to keep their controversial host on short leash.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association