Easy to scare corporate fat cats (many of whom are liberals, anyway); less easy to scare regular folks:
An advertising boycott against Fox News host Glenn Beck has succeeded in keeping most major sponsors from running commercials on his show even as the controversial commentator’s viewership has grown.
Beck attracted 2.81 million viewers Monday, his third-largest audience since his show launched on Fox News in January, according to Nielsen Media Research data provided by the network. On Tuesday, nearly 2.7 million viewers tuned in, his fifth-largest viewership to date…
…few major businesses remain as sponsors of Beck’s eponymous 2 p.m. PDT program. On Wednesday, the only big companies with a presence during his show were Bank of America and the Wall Street Journal, whose parent company News Corp. also owns Fox News. The rest of the commercials included spots for gold seller Rosland Capital; Ashley Furniture Home Store; Empire Carpet; Liberty Medical, a diabetes medical supplier; Johnson Law Group, an asbestos litigation firm; “Shadow Government,” a new book critical of Obama published by the National Republican Trust; and the anti-tax group TeaPartyExpress.org.
Fox News insists that the boycott has not affected its revenue, because advertisers have just moved their commercials to different time periods. And for his part, Beck appears invigorated by the challenge. “Even if the powers to be right now succeed in making me poor, drum me out … I will only be stronger for it,” he said on the air Wednesday.
And the advertisers will come back – because for television, its all about how many eyeballs are watching the screen. Advertisers can’t resist a lot of eye balls. Many corporations have already folded to leftist pressure and more will likely do so…but those advertisers who don’t care about the left will make up the slack.