UPDATE TUES MORNING: BMW has joined the list of advertisers pulling out of O’Reilly.
MONDAY NIGHT: Bill O’Reilly just doesn’t get it. The big unravel has begun.
Both Mercedes and Hyundai have pulled their ads from “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News following new allegations of sexual harassment by a former associate. This comes on top of Saturday’s New York Times story that Fox had already settled over $13 million in cases against the obnoxious right wing host.
The die is cast. O’Reilly will fight it. But now campaigns are popping up on Twitter and elsewhere chiding advertisers to leave the show. Whether or not he signed a new contract recently, O’Reilly is cooked if the money goes. And the money is leaving.
And this: for the third week in a row, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC has beaten O’Reilly in they key age demo, 24 to 54. That has to sting a lot. But Maddow is on the upswing thanks to Donald Trump. O’Reilly’s defense of Trump is falling on deaf ears.
The fact that this has spread suddenly into the mainstream– that’s a sign that Fox News is ambivalent to say the least about O’Reilly’s future. When they loved him, they protected O’Reilly. But those were the days of Roger Ailes, and those days are over.
On Monday Fox and O’Reilly were attacked twice by former associates. Jill Roginsky filed suit against FoxNews, Ailes, and Bill Shine for retaliating against her after she blew off Ailes’ advances and then wouldn’t endorse him in the Gretchen Carlson case.
At the same time, Lisa Bloom, attorney and daughter of Gloria Allred, held a press conference with her client Wendy Walsh. Walsh, a clinical psychologist who used to appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” and other Fox News programs, recalled her alleged treatment by O’Reilly– she says she couldn’t get a permanent role on his show because she’d rebuffed his sexual entreaties.
