More and more pressure is building on Fox News over sexual harassment claims made against Bill O’Reilly.
“The O’Reilly Factor” is facing a growing advertiser revolt, as 20 companies have pulled their commercials from the show amid a scandal involving the host, Bill O’Reilly.
Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW of North America, Mitsubishi Motors, Lexus, Constant Contact, Bayer, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, Orkin, UNTUCKit, Allstate, Esurance (which is owned by Allstate), T. Rowe Price, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Credit Karma, Wayfair, The Wonderful Company, TrueCar and the Society for Human Resource Management are pulling ads from “The O’Reilly Factor” after a report about five settlements with women who alleged sexual harassment or verbal abuse by O’Reilly.
The decisions signal the potential of financial damage for “The O’Reilly Factor,” the most popular show on cable news, and its network, Fox News.
Paul Rittenberg, the executive vice president of advertising sales at Fox News, addressed the exodus in a statement on Tuesday.
“We value our partners and are working with them to address their current concerns about the O’Reilly Factor,” Rittenberg said. “At this time, the ad buys of those clients have been re-expressed into other FNC programs.”
This was earlier in the day when only 18 had cancelled ads:
18 companies pull ads. from @oreillyfactor‘s show in wake of harassment report https://t.co/vc2FWruXew https://t.co/N6vzVjp4eN
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) April 4, 2017
Of course, CNN and the other news outlets have a dog in this game – their networks are competing directly with O’Reilly…