NEW YORK, NEW YORK — At the time of publication, twenty companies have stopped advertising on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a Fox News commentary show hosted by one of the network’s biggest stars, Bill O’Reilly. While this kind of advertising free fall has beset other conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck before, this development comes at a time when Fox is starting to lose in the ratings to MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow. The advertiser exodus began after revelations that Fox News has had to pay over $13 million in settlements over the years to women accusing O’Reilly of inappropriate sexual conduct.
While some have wondered how O’Reilly and Fox will recover, one company has offered to ride to their rescue.
“At Planned Parenthood, we’re sort of the experts on pulling out,” a statement from Planned Parenthood’s deputy junior media liaison reads, “and we couldn’t help but notice a whole lot of pulling out going on over at The O’Reilly Factor. Being the charitable non-profit we are, we’d like to offer Mr. O’Reilly our services, as advertisers, as we know that simply aborting his show is just not on the table at this time, and besides that’s such a very small part of what we do here, anyway.”
The offer from Planned Parenthood stipulates that in order for Fox News to receive their advertising dollars, that Mr. O’Reilly must make some admissions on-air.
“First,” the offer reads, “Bill has to admit that Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than we perform thanks to our free contraceptives and sex-ed classes. This isn’t liberal mumbojumbo. This is cold, hard, scientific fact, which we know offends Bill and his viewers, so we understand if this is hard for him — or them — to swallow.”
Advertisers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz were among the first to pull away from “The O’Reilly Factor.” But by the end of the day on Tuesday, twenty had made similar moves. Fox News released a statement saying they were working to alleviate advertisers’ concerns about sponsoring the show. Mr. O’Reilly has yet to publicly address the massive sponsor pull-out underway.
“We understand that as much as he clearly keeps to the tenets of his faith in every single regard,” Planned Parenthood wrote, “that Mr. O’Reilly is likely torn about all this pulling out. They don’t call it the Catholic Condom for nothing, are we right? We’ll be here all week, tip your waitress.”
Spokespeople for Fox News, O’Reilly, or the show could not be reached for comment, though Mr. O’Reilly said when he did have something to say he’d “DO IT LIVE!”
This is a developing story.
Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.
