Glenn Beck and Fox are losing money.

We've got big news. In the six weeks since Glenn Beck called the President a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people,"¹ we've done serious damage to his platform. More than 200,000 ColorOfChange members have spoken out, and 62 advertisers have listened and stopped supporting Beck's show.

And it's hitting Fox where it hurts. Glenn Beck's show is making less than half the money it was making when we started calling on companies to pull their advertisements from the show.

Beck and his supporters are fighting back with everything they've got--trying to pressure advertisers to reverse their decisions, working to undermine the President's agenda, and continuing to stoke fear and anger with lies and distortions.During the last week in July, Beck's show registered over $1 million from advertising. The first week in September, that number was down to less than $500,000, even as his ratings have gone up.² Fox News is now sacrificing more than a half-million ad dollars a week to keep him on the air.

What's happening is a matter of simple supply and demand. Fox has a limited amount of time devoted to ads each day. If 62 companies refuse to run ads during Beck's show, the demand for that time is reduced, and the rates Fox can charge for the show plummet. In Beck's case, almost no major companies are willing to advertise during either of his twice-a-day broadcasts, so Fox can't collect as much ad revenue as they could before. If we can keep the advertisers away, Fox will have to decide sometime soon whether it's worth losing money to keep Beck's poison on the air.

Beck's smear campaign

Beck claims to be a patriot who asks hard questions and gives his viewers the facts. In reality, he consistently uses lies, distortions, and exaggerations to stir up anger and fear, and to distract his viewers from working towards real solutions to the problems facing our country. He seems determined to create an atmosphere in which the White House can accomplish nothing, and he's doing it partly by launching vicious smear campaigns on President Obama'a character, policies and advisers.

Beck attacked ColorOfChange's co-founder, Van Jones, for weeks, exaggerating and distorting Van's record on 16 shows as well as devoting an entire segment to discrediting him. Beck presented his attacks on Van as honest journalistic inquiry, while dishonestly failing to mention that Van co-founded the group leading a successful advertiser boycott against him. Last week, Van resigned from his job as the White House Special Adviser on Green Jobs rather than force the administration to deal with Beck's politically-motivated attacks.³

Also last week, another Obama official, Yosi Sergant, was demoted from his post at the National Endowment for the Arts after being attacked viciously by Beck.⁴ And Beck has made it clear he's got other targets.⁵

Holding the line

Our campaign is working. Respectable companies don't want to be associated with Beck or support his show with their dollars. It's resulting in a major loss of funding for his show, and at the same time making it clear that Beck's race-baiting and fear-mongering are far outside the mainstream.

The longer Beck stays isolated, the more of a problem he'll be for Fox, and the less he'll be able to spread his lies and distortions. If we can keep the pressure on, Fox will have to make a choice: 1) drop Beck because it doesn't make business sense to keep him; or 2) communicate to the world that they're so intent on providing a platform for race-baiting and fear-mongering that they don't care if they lose money (a serious problem for a public company like News Corporation, the owner of Fox).

More than ever, it's time to keep the pressure on. You can help by joining us in thanking the advertisers that have stopped supporting Glenn Beck, and calling on those whose ads are still running on his show to follow suit:

http://colorofchange.org/beck/hold/?id=2246-1105988

Thanks and Peace,

-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
September 15th, 2009

1. "Beck caps off week of race-baiting by calling Obama a 'racist,'" Media Matters for America, 7-30-2009
http://mediamatters.org/research/200907300019

2. Propreitary study conducted by leading media monitoring organization using industry-standard data.
(for press inquiries, contact beckstudy@colorofchange.org.)

3. "White House Official Resigns After G.O.P. Criticism," New York Times, 9-06-09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/politics/07vanjones.html

4. "Beck Strikes Again; Yosi Sergant Reassigned at NEA," Washington Post, 9-10-2009
http://tinyurl.com/oa5oyn

5. @glennbeck on Twitter, 9-03-09
http://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/3749169499

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