It used to be that advertiser boycotts sometimes worked. They even worked on Fox News in the past. In 2009 all it took for a boycott against Glenn Beck was for him to say that Obama was racist. That resulted in a huge advertiser boycott, which then resulted in them cancelling his show. In 2017 advertisers pulled out of Bill O’Reilly’s show, but it wasn’t his hateful views that resulted in the boycott, it was the sexual misconduct allegations. Tucker Carlson’s show was cancelled eventually too, there were some advertiser boycotts, but it really seemed like what hurt Fox was that they lost a defamation case that he caused and it cost them nearly $1 billion.
OTOH, often boycotts don’t work. The boycott against Laura Ingraham didn’t seem to work. Her show is still on the air. She was forced to apologize though. Jeanine Pirro was lightly punished with her attacks on Ilhan Omar, but her show was never cancelled. It stayed on the air until she became (and it’s hard to believe this is real) the US Attorney for DC.
It seems like sometimes a loss of money works. But, it seems to work better if it’s a defamation suit vs. an advertiser boycott. Still, an ad boycott might help.
Here are some lists of who advertises on Fox News:
Fox News is able to survive advertisement boycotts more easily than other outlets because they charge a higher rate to cable providers to carry their channel. They know their viewership will sign up with the company that has their channel and not the competitor that doesn’t. So all providers need to have it because their audience is huge. So they collect a larger percentage of their revenue from these companies than other channels do.and because of that, they don’t need as much money from advertisers and can more easily absorb an advertiser boycott.
It used to be that advertiser boycotts sometimes worked. They even worked on Fox News in the past. In 2009 all it took for a boycott against Glenn Beck was for him to say that Obama was racist. That resulted in a huge advertiser boycott, which then resulted in them cancelling his show. In 2017 advertisers pulled out of Bill O’Reilly’s show, but it wasn’t his hateful views that resulted in the boycott, it was the sexual misconduct allegations. Tucker Carlson’s show was cancelled eventually too, there were some advertiser boycotts, but it really seemed like what hurt Fox was that they lost a defamation case that he caused and it cost them nearly $1 billion.
OTOH, often boycotts don’t work. The boycott against Laura Ingraham didn’t seem to work. Her show is still on the air. She was forced to apologize though. Jeanine Pirro was lightly punished with her attacks on Ilhan Omar, but her show was never cancelled. It stayed on the air until she became (and it’s hard to believe this is real) the US Attorney for DC.
It seems like sometimes a loss of money works. But, it seems to work better if it’s a defamation suit vs. an advertiser boycott. Still, an ad boycott might help.
Here are some lists of who advertises on Fox News:
https://whoadvertiseson.org/foxnews/
https://www.trueusa.org/boycott
Fox News is able to survive advertisement boycotts more easily than other outlets because they charge a higher rate to cable providers to carry their channel. They know their viewership will sign up with the company that has their channel and not the competitor that doesn’t. So all providers need to have it because their audience is huge. So they collect a larger percentage of their revenue from these companies than other channels do.and because of that, they don’t need as much money from advertisers and can more easily absorb an advertiser boycott.