In a presentation document, Fox News “pitched its ad space to potential sponsors by laying out internal data” suggesting that any negative coverage of the network’s commentary
doesn’t actually harm advertisers, reports The Daily
Beast, which says it obtained and reviewed the document.
A “source familiar with the presentation” told the left-wing Beast that the mid-year pitch deck had
been circulated to potential advertisers in recent months.
“Companies have been ‘only temporarily impacted by advertiser boycotts,’ the network wrote, alongside a graph
showing a brief spike in brand mentions for five of its advertisers in March 2019, when old tapes surfaced of [Fox News host Tucker] Carlson making racist and misogynistic comments on shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show,” the
Beast reports.
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The presentation stated that “conversation volume declined quickly to normal levels regardless of response,” and stressed that “87% of all direct
advertiser targeting was from shares and comments on tweets from just three different anti-Fox News activists” — liberal writer Judd Legum, social-media activist group Sleeping Giants, and
anonymous resistance Twitter account @DesignationSix, according to the Beast.
Asked for comment by DND, a Fox News spokesperson emailed to offer to “discuss” the
Beast article on the phone, but declined to comment on the article for the record in writing, by email.
For the quarter ending September 30, Fox News Media -- including Fox News Channel
-- posted an 18% increase in ad sales, to $299 million. Affiliate revenue was 4% higher, to $973 million. Fox Corp. advertising overall was down 7%.
In early December, Fox Corp. CFO Steve
Tomsic disclosed that Fox News realized nearly $400 million in political ad sales between January and November 2020.
Fox and other cable news networks saw large increases in viewership during
the run-up to the national election and through November -- as well as
spikes during coverage of last week's illegal invasion of the Capitol.