Advertisements

The Glenn Beck advertiser boycott has officially reached the mainstream as the AP ran a story today about the advertiser backlash that Fox News and Glenn Beck are facing after he called President Obama a racist. Clorox became the latest big name to drop Beck.

The AP story is essentially a rehash of what we have been writing about here at Politicus for the last couple of weeks. The interesting twist is that Clorox has not only dumped Beck, but has decided not to advertise on any political talk shows, regardless of whether they are liberal or conservative.

A topic that I addressed on Friday when it was announced that Verizon Wireless, was dumping Beck is the potential impact on ad revenue that might come with all of these big name companies dropping him. The Glenn Beck show draws over 2 million a viewers a day, but without big name advertisers competing for the ad slots during his show, ad revenue will fall.

Advertisements

This boycott won’t impact FNC’s overall revenue as many of the advertisers have simply shifted their ads to other shows on the network, but Beck’s show, with its massive ratings, is a huge moneymaker for them. If advertisers are too skittish to run their ads on Beck, it hurts revenue in that time slot. Plus, the Beck incident is forcing advertisers to take a hard look at whether they want to advertise on controversial programs.

Beck’s calling Obama a racist could end up hurting liberal and conservative political talk programs if advertisers decide that appealing to those viewers isn’t worth the risk of controversy. The Sunday morning talk shows play it safe, so I think they are immune from this, but Olbermann, Matthews, O’Reilly, and Hannity could also feel some pain if advertisers decide that political talk shows aren’t worth the risk of some bad publicity.