Laura Ingraham is returning to her show on Fox News on Monday night, despite some questions about whether her spring break hiatus would be made permanent. Once she is back, Ingraham will have to confront a continued advertiser boycott and controversy since she mocked one of the teenage survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting in a tweet. The Washington Post writes that this is just the new normal for Fox News. Ingraham, one of the cable news giant’s biggest stars, is being welcomed back with the full support of Rupert Murdoch, who also urged the network’s president, Jack Abernethy, to stand behind her. Sean Hannity, another star at Fox, was subjected to three advertising defections in 2017. The expectation at the network is that more are likely to follow. Fox has found that the best way to find and keep viewers is to rile them up. But this comes with a risk.
“Any business that doesn’t have a paywall is vulnerable to this on the left and the right, and everyone should be concerned,” a Fox insider who was not authorized to speak about internal discussions said to The Post.
On March 28, Ingraham tweeted: “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . . . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”
David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018
In response, Hogg tweeted a list of advertisers on Ingraham’s show and urged followers to contact them. Eighteen companies proceeded to pull ads. According to research firm Kantar Media, the advertising time in Ingraham’s show in the two days after the tweet dropped by more than half. Ingraham apologized for her tweet in “the spirit of Holy Week,” but Hogg didn’t accept it and advertisers stayed away.
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