Laura Ingraham has soured the Fox News brand, new data shows. Potentially, her reckless actions could end up costing Fox News more in public perception than the sexual assaults of Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly,
Heck of a job, Laura.
Source: LA Times
Fox News is standing by its embattled host Laura Ingraham, who has seen advertisers flee her show over a tweet aimed at Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg.
"We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts," Jack Abernethy, co-president of Fox News, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. "We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children."
Ingraham has gone on a scheduled break after a week in which she came under fire for mocking David, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after he mentioned in an interview that he was not accepted by four University of California schools.
Advertising has dried up for her show, now reduced mostly to 1-800 direct sellers.
On Friday, the program had only two spots — both from IBM — that were not direct response advertisers (those that typically sell products and services through a 1-800 number and are usually less sensitive about where their spots run).
Sounds dire, right? Well, maybe.
One person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to publicly comment said the boycott has not yet resulted in a significant financial hit.
This person said no advertiser has pulled their dollars from the network but have simply moved from "The Ingraham Angle" to other programs on the Fox News schedule. Most of the advertisers are out because they want to avoid the controversy associated with the story and could revisit the situation in a few weeks after Ingraham returns.
So if Fox News is just shuffling the advertising dollars around as this suggests, does that mean Ingraham will just weather the storm and national brands will return when all this passes?
According to something called the YouGov Brand Index, none of the advertisers have suffered from leaving Ingraham's show. However, Fox News itself showed a big drop after Ingraham's attack on the Parkland kids.
This suggests, among all Americans and not just their viewers, Ingraham has cost Fox News in potential revenue. At least temporarily, she's poisoned their brand. And if that turns out to be the case when she returns she could very well be on a short leash indeed.
Good.
