Ad Pullouts Cost ‘Ingraham’ Half Its Commercial Time

The ad boycott against Fox News Channel’s Ingraham Angle has cost the program about half of its commercial minutes and five of its top 20 advertisers, according to Kantar Media.

Laura Ingraham hosts Fox News Channel's "The Ingraham Angle."

Laura Ingraham hosts Fox News Channel's "The Ingraham Angle."

Kantar found that ad time on the Ingraham Angle was down 40% during the show’s March 30 telecast and down 52% on March 31. The show had been averaging 14 minutes and 33 second of ads during the first quarter.

Host Laura Ingraham announced that she will be on vacation this week. She apologized for remarks she made about David Hogg, one of the students who is advocating for tighter controls on guns after surviving the shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Despite the apology, Hogg and others have continued the boycott.

On Monday (April 3), Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy said he expected Ingraham to be back next week. “We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts,” he said.

Kantar said that five of the advertisers that have said they will no longer advertise on the Ingraham Angle — Bayer AG Group, Hulu, Johnson & Johnson, Liberty Mutual Insurance and Wayfair — were among the top 20 spenders on the show during the first quarter.

Other advertisers that have pulled out of the show — Entertainment Studios, Honda, Jenny Craig, Jos A Bank, Nestle, Nutrish, Office Depot, Principal Finance, Progressive Insurance, Ruby Tuesday, Stitch Fix and TripAdvisor — accounted for 13% of the show’s commercial time.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.