Why Aren't There More Mainstream Ads On Conservative Media?

Despite the popularity of conservative radio and TV shows and networks, many struggle to land maintain mainstream advertisers, leaving discounted space available for small companies selling hair color, hair plugs and vitamin supplements for dogs. As such, some personalities find themselves endorsing products and services that, in a perfect world, they’d probably rather not

Deseret.com reports this is a change from the heyday of talk radio in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the late Rush Limbaugh helped to make the bottled drink Snapple a household word. And it’s a change that has occurred, in part, because of social media.

“My suspicion is that most blue-chip companies want no part of conservative opinion programming today,” Brian Rosenwald, scholar in residence at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Talk Radio’s America,” said in an email.

“It’s so incendiary and controversial, the clips go viral in a way that was nearly impossible when talk radio started to rise in the 1990s, and we’ve seen social-media boycotts of advertisers when activists were offended by content on shows,” Rosenwald said.

But there’s another reason that some conservative programming struggles to find advertisers today, despite impressive ratings and a loyal, trusting audience. It’s called Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that works to undermine Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and other voices it considers destructive.

Media Matters, a left-wing watchdog group founded in 2004, has previously said one of its goals is to “neutralize/undermine” Fox News, the conservative-leaning network that has dominated cable news for more than two decades.

Businesses and corporations are increasingly protective of their brand and reputation, and not only because of politics, said Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice, assistant professor of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, said that when it comes to Fox, there’s a difference between opinion shows, like Tucker Carlson’s, and news shows, such as “America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer & Dana Perino.”

Angelo Carusone

Media Matters doesn’t make that distinction. And a columnist for The Los Angeles Times recently wondered how Carlson could be profitable for Fox, given the lack of major advertisers on his prime-time show, which in April came in first among cable shows among viewers ages 25 to 54, the demographic most prized by advertisers.

But on a recent morning, advertisers on “America’s Newsroom” included BMW, Lexus and T-Mobile. In its campaign urging people to contact Fox advertisers, Media Matters directs them to a list that includes companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and General Motors.

Angelo Carusone, the president and CEO of Media Matters for America, has led campaigns to boycott advertisers on the Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly programs, was also instrumental in Macy’s decision to end its business with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015. He acknowledges that people can say Media Matters has been ultimately ineffective because Limbaugh was on the air until the month before he died, Beck and O’Reilly still banter on AM radio and on Sirius XM, and Fox remains the most popular cable news network.

Boycotts work both ways, however, as some companies are finding. There have been calls by conservatives to boycott advertisers of more liberal voices, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Backlash to so-called “woke capitalism” has some consumers avoiding previously cherished brands, like Disney, and one conservative group recently launched an advertising campaign against companies that it perceives to be too radical, including American Airlines, Coca-Cola and Nike.