Advertiser Boycott
belated? disambig
this is about advertisers/sponsors bailing (gnerslly involves grassroots effirtz/)
sparked by
wapo
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...
...Hannity’s “advocacy journalism” sometimes entails passing along stories that never quite check out. He used his TV show last year to promote the false rumor that Hillary Clinton was hiding a severe health crisis. He let Trump push the baseless idea that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. “I saw that somewhere on the Internet,” Hannity said.
After the election, Hannity doubled down on his loyalty. He defended the administration’s false contention that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the biggest ever.
And Hannity spent many hours hawking a discredited theory whereby a murdered Democratic National Committee employee, Seth Rich, was said to have been killed by Democratic operatives because he supposedly had leaked emails that were embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. Fox News retracted its report that had lent credence to the theory, and police affirmed that the scenario had no validity; the murder was the result of a robbery gone bad.
Through much of the spring, Hannity kept at the story, backing off only after Media Matters urged his advertisers to pull their ads. Several did, though one, USAA insurance, returned to his show because “we heard from our members, and . . . the lines between news and commentary are increasingly blurred,” a company statement said.
In late May, Hannity, facing pressure from Rich’s parents, dropped the story. “Out of respect for the family’s wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time,” Hannity said on TV. Fox News and Hannity declined to comment on the Rich coverage.
The Rich debacle led some people who know Hannity to believe that his time at Fox was nearing an end, that the next generation of the Murdoch family was looking to tone down the sensationalism. But Hannity has told friends he would never cave to those who want to take him down.
“I’ve told you for years what’s going on here,” Hannity said on the radio in May. “I’ve told you that every single conservative host on radio that you like and you listen to is being recorded every second of every day by these losers in their bathrobes or in their underwear . . . being paid to do it in the hope that we conservatives say one word, one sentence, one phrase that they don’t like and that they can then use to attack our advertisers in the hopes that our advertisers will bail out, the show becomes financially unfeasible and that the host gets fired.
“This is a kill shot. . . . This is to silence me.”
When Ted Koppel interviewed him in March, Hannity asked the CBS newsman, “You think I’m bad for America?”
“Yeah,” Koppel replied, “because you have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
Like Hannity, Chip Franklin, a radio host at KGO in San Francisco, started out in the business as a conservative, but Franklin switched sides and now runs a liberal show. “I know Hannity knows that Koppel was right,” Franklin said.
“I’ve seen what happens to people like Hannity because I was seduced in the ’80s and ’90s when I was yelling about what Clinton did to Monica Lewinsky and things like that. I know Hannity knew that Obama was born in the United States. I know Hannity has the same facts we all do about the crowd size at the inauguration or the Russian connection. I know that because I knew him in New York and he was always a conservative, but not like this.
“And then he got in this boat and didn’t realize how strong the current was, and he couldn’t get off. Because people adore him now. Nobody around him wants him to change. So he doubles down. He can’t go against his audience because he’ll lose millions of dollars.”
(Stavros Damos/For The Washington Post)
“Donald Trump and Sean Hannity are both disrupters of the status quo,” said Kellyanne Conway, counsel to the president and an architect of the administration’s communications approach. “Disrupters project a strength and moxie that fascinates some people and causes envy in others.”
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This past Monday I wrote a Daily Kos article about the Republican talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, being dropped, after 22 years, from the Indianapolis radio station WIBC. Many other news /opinion sites covered the story, as well as IBJ (Indianapolis Business Journal). Most of the stories basically said the move was a simple change in direction:
Officials for WIBC parent Emmis Communications this month notified Los Angeles-based syndicator Premiere Networks that it would not extend its deal to air Limbaugh’s show.
Here's where the IBJ piece was a little different. Emmis' local market manager, Charlie Morgan, said the mega company's decision to drop Limbaugh was much more than a simple change - and they have been contemplating this move for 18 months.
While Morgan expects some WIBC listeners to be “hugely disappointed” by the change, he said losing Limbaugh could open up the station to more advertising opportunities.
"There are some—primarily national—advertisers that refuse to air commercials during Limbaugh’s show, Morgan explained. "
Emmis officials began notifying its advertisers of the change Monday.
And there it is - bonafide proof once again, that the boycott against Rush Limbaugh and his sponsors is not only working, it's remarkably effective. It's changing the face of talk radio altogether. Right now the biggest problem with radio - is Rush Limbaugh. And the hundreds of thousands of Limbaugh boycotters couldn't be more pleased.
Advertisers can't handle the pressure and loss of customers. Most companies, other than those run by Republican Dittoheads, are avoiding Rush Limbaugh like the plague. This was not the case in 2012. That year, self-proclaimed 'El Rushbo' enjoyed sitting on the king's throne of Conservative 'hate radio' with a plethora of large lucrative sponsors. That all changed after he called an unknown college student a
while she advocated for insurance-paid birth control at a congressional hearing. Once Limbaugh's rant hit social media and went viral, huge sponsors like Ford, GM, McDonald's, Subway, Carbonite…began to pull their ads immediately after seeing the public's outrage. Yes, the good old days are long gone for Limbaugh, though his camp begs to differ and continues to make lame attempts to derail the boycott Limbaugh used tojoke about. Also, his PR team is now blitzing search engines like Google with 10 or more RushLimbaugh.com stories per day - from the same show. Guess they need those page views to generate revenue because it sure isn't coming from sponsors.
Kudos, once again, to the many individuals, groups/organizations and websites involved in this successful movement. They are not mentioned enough. It's been a slow, agonizing fall for Rush Limbaugh, and it's given the protestors some pretty glorious victories and affirmations along the way. There will be more celebrations to come. Some organizations like NOW (The National Organization For Women) NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Planned Parenthoodhave been after Limbaugh for years. The amazing StopRush volunteers have been relentless. Other Limbaugh protestors and bashers include:
News Websites/Blogs like Media Matters, Daily Kos, Daily Kos 'Sluts', Liberals Unite, UniteWomen.org, Addicting Info, Occupy Democrats, ReverbPress, The Smoking Gun, Alternet, UntraViolet, and Huffington Post.
Facebook Pages like Boycott Rush Limbaugh's Sponsors To Shut Him Down, Being Liberal, Honoring Richard Myers, Pro-Choice Liberals, Miss R*EVOLutionaries, Chicks on the Left, Living Blue In Texas, Pragmatic Progressives, Everlasting GOP Stoppers, Too Informed To Vote Republican, Worley Dervish, Lady Grey, The Beer Party, Lady Liberals, Red State Dems, The Ale Party, One Million Sluts Against Rush Limbaugh and Political Loudmouth.
Facebook 'Groups' like FlushRush, Join The Fight To Flush Rush, Fight Laws Against Women, Pro-Choice Democrats, End Citizens United, ERA Action, and Stop Republican Laws Against Women.
Well Known Individuals like Gloria Steinem, Jon Stewart, Lewis Black, Rachel Maddow, Al Franken, Stephen Colbert, Peter Gabriel, Spike Lee, Andy Borowitz, Crystal Ball, the late, great George Carlin, Ed Shultz, Sandra Fluke, Ice-T, Jane Fonda, and Gloria Allred.
Individuals Equally Important include the late Daily Kos diarist Richard Myers, Wojtek Wacowski, Rick Unger, Cenk Uygur, Angelo Carusone, Karen Teegarden, Jen Senko, Matthew Desmond, Samuel Wynn Warde, Kimberley Johnson, HRHPrissy, Freya Malin, John Jorgenson, Kitty Fitzgerald, LOrion, ProgLegs, Gary Flinn, and Certinot.
The list is massive. The Limbaugh Sponsor & Clear Channel/iHeart Petition, alone has over 131,000 signatures.
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