Tucker Carlson has returned from the vacation he took right after horrifying decent people with his claim that white supremacy is a “hoax” but the advertisers he lost did not return with him.
You may recall that Carlson called white supremacy a “hoax” and “actually not a real problem in America” three days after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas by a guy who quacked an awful lot like a white supremacist.
According to Media Matters, the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show lost at least five advertisers — HelloFresh, Nestle, SteinMart, Calm and SoFi — while Carlson was gone and “many more have quietly distanced themselves.” Long John Silver’s was reportedly “so frustrated that it removed its ads from the network entirely.”
But as The New York Times noted, this was just the latest wave of advertiser flight:
The first wave of desertions came in December, when dozens of companies, including IHOP, Ancestry.com and TD Ameritrade, said they would stop advertising on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after he said that the arrival of certain immigrants “makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.”
More companies removed their ads from the show in March, when Media Matters for America, a liberal advocacy group, published years-old excerpts from the “Bubba the Love Sponge” shock-jock radio show featuring Mr. Carlson making offensive comments about women.
Although Carlson’s show remains popular, advertisers remain spooked. More from The Times:
A total of 218 companies had commercials during episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” during last year’s second quarter, a group that included Liberty Mutual, Capital One and Subaru, according to the ad-tracking firm Kantar Media. For the same time period this year, the number of companies whose ads ran during the show was down to 107. The average amount of paid commercial time during episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has also declined.
But while I am certainly not sorry to see Carlson’s poison contaminate Fox’s bottom line, I remain skeptical about the overall usefulness of advertiser boycotts. For one thing, The Times notes that many of the companies that fled Carlson have “stuck with the network,” meaning they have merely moved their purchases to other shows.
More importantly, there is a good chance the advertisers will not be gone for good. Last year, you probably recall Fox’s Ingraham Angle lost advertisers after host Laura Ingraham mocked Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. “Since then, the percentage of advertising revenue from her show has increased,” The Times reported.
(Carlson image via screen grab)
Think about it. “Eyes On Fox”. Once upon a time (pre-Trump) I watched an awfully lot of Fox News. Now not so much because in the age of Trump Fox News has become almost unwatchable it’s so ridiculous. Clearly the worst analysis and most biased news in the cable news business (yes, arguably somewhat worse than even liberal MSNBC).
And, yes, like Media Matters I criticize their crap ‘journalism’. I’m here frequently discussing various topics of Fox News criticism. If you think you’ve got a good counterpoint I’m here do debate. But you better know you stuff because the lame, unsubstantiated talking points conservatives have posted here are easily shredded.
Does anyone EVER think about this…we were TWICE in WORLD WARS with Germany, the last with Japan along with them. The most horrible things were done by the Germans and Japanese. Yet, within a decade after, and ever since, no hatred. The Japanese people in the U.S. in particular I adore.
But the NON WHITES will witch moan and groan til the end of time. They stir and stir and never ever let the slavery issue end. For God’s sake, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves over a 150 years ago. GROW UP…GET THE CHIPS OFF OF YOUR SHOULDERS…LET IT GO!
Oh, BS. I didn’t know LJS was still in business.
SteinMart has never made a dime from me, my ONE trip there.
Nestle, at least the candy, is just another reason people are so fat.
The others…never heard of them.
This conservative tidal wave is surprising for this blog but if you follow conservative threads on Twitter like #MAGA it’s typical. You get the cheerleaders who post one or two liner memorized dubious talking points who refuse to respond when engaged with thoughtful analysis and facts. Typically they have less than 200 followers – if even 100 – and I wonder like we are here if they’re bots or just some limited information talk radio junkie parroting the last thing they heard. I’ve posted to 100 or more and never got a response.
I agree. I have twice asked for proof that Carlson is charging higher prices and nobody has provided any. That’s not counting the false claim that his show is the most popular.
I tried to determine where the traffic is coming from last night but was unable. I’ll try again tonight when I have a chance.
You have a shooter in El Paso who extensively quoted Trump and, unsurprisingly, the Trump sycophants at Fox News in a political manifesto and in words he shouted during his shooting spree. He also expressed Trump’s rabidly anti-immigrant policies by targeting Hispanics at Walmart in an overwhelmingly Hispanic dominated area.
Then you have the Dayton shooter whose history of violent thoughts dates back to his high school years where he maintained rape lists of girls who caught his eye and threatened to kill students he resented. None of this was politically motivated. He posts some social media comments he’s sympathetic to communism and might be persuaded to vote for Warren and MAGA land fantasizes he’s motivated by politics. Yet, his targets in Dayton appear to be random including him probably accidentally shooting his sister and friend.
So who’s the “idiot”?
I hope you are better informed about your claim that Carlson has the highest ad cost. But until one of you proves it, there’s no reason to believe it.
Even if you are specifically tasked with defending Carlson and want to join in on that subject only, I for one would love to see your contributions on a regular basis.
Are your lightning raids into Libland confined solely to ‘correcting’ us about Carlson or do you work across a range of MAGA-related topics? Does some central presence send out alerts for foot soldiers to action or is it a loose collective that just prefers to hunt as a pack? That last one would be a little commie, wouldn’t it? Are you actual billionaires or just top corporate CEOs/investors who have profited so immensely from the Trump tax cuts?
If you recall many years back Tucker was on CNN’s Crossfire program. It was a show where a conservative and a liberal pundit shared heated, purely partisan outrage with each other. One day Jon Stewart shows up as a guest to promote a book and he shames the show out of existence criticizing its divisive, dishonest, partisan nastiness.
Here we sit observing post-truth conservative Fox News all these years later. Tucker has returned to his old habits of nasty partisan, distorted rants. The only difference is now he majors in white nationalism to keep up with the Trump MAGA times and less time is devoted to presenting alternative viewpoints.
And the greater irony is Fox ‘News’ features nothing but this sort of nasty, divisive partisan hackery in its prime time line up. Further, its ‘news’ division segments have become mostly feeder material to introduce Crossfire style guest punditry. The only difference is Fox ‘News’ rigs its Crossfire ‘debates’ so conservatives always win. Those popular opinion segments have bred entire afternoon ‘news’ programs like Outnumbered, Outnumbered Overtime, and The Five devoted to ‘debates’ where right-wingers outnumber some weak liberal 4:1.
Of course, this nasty, partisan, fact lite content is highly popular with partisan conservatives. Who excuse this dishonest crap as actually being ‘high quality’ because it’s popular. Like ‘reality TV’ must be real and high quality because it gets high ratings.
Carlson is an unimportant former blogger who lucked out when Fox News needed a new blowhard to come in as they went through their changeover a couple of years ago. He appears to want to just say as many outrageous things as he can in the hope that he’ll get more attention for himself. In the same way that Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin regularly misbehave in public, to their own detriment.
The fact that Fox News keeps him and Ingraham on is a testament to the network’s total lack of credibility as a journalistic endeavor.