You may have heard that MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future, Dailykos.com and others are gathering steam in a campaign they hope will discourage current advertisers to stay away from Fox News Channel.
Right now, these efforts are in the information-gathering campaign. Then, when enough info is accumulated, Netizens will be asked to call these advertisers and complain.
I think this strategy is misguided and doomed to failure. Ads will not be pulled, and conservatives will mock this campaign as yet another bleat from the politically correct Netroots.
What good isit going to do if thousands, tens of thousands, many tens of thousands of enraged Netizens call Fox News advertisers? In many if not most cases, these advertisers and their media buyers, have decided to place commercials in media with enough viewers/readers that have some overlap with the market demographics of the products they are trying to sell.
Your typical Fox News advertisers spread around their ad dollars because they want to reach a broad swath of people.
True, several surveys have shown Fox News viewers to be right of center. A "guest" segment in which a talking head says that climate change is natural, Saddam worked with Al-Qaida to plan 9/11 and had WMD when we invaded, is likely to curry favor with those fear-and-superstion-driven viewers who espouse the same beliefs that those experts who appear on Fox News do.
But there is a funny conundrum about those Fox News viewers. They rarely get their tv news from anywhere else, and yes, they buy stuff.
So my thinking is that if you are, well, selling stuff, Fox News should be part of your ad buy.
It shouldn't matter to that advertiser if a Fox News viewer agrees with an expert they just saw interviewed who says Alberto Gonzales is telling the truth- and oh, President Bush is as well.
The main question to Fox News' current and potential advertisers should not be, what kind of jive is being said on "news" programs I am advertising on.
The main question for Fox News' current and potential advertisers should be, "will that program's viewers buy my products?"