Fairness Doctrine enters Stage Left via ...

... The Death of a Thousand Cuts.

I've always believed in the revival of one form or another of The Fairness Doctrine, but I never would have believed that it would come back in such an insidious manner. From AdAge:

Could Glenn Beck be killing off an entire cable genre?

After the recent controversy over the cable talker, marketers seem to be considering pulling ads from the politically oriented cable news shows that have helped NBC Universal's MSNBC and News Corp.'s Fox News Channel thrive in the ratings -- no matter what their political leanings.

Walmart Stores, Berkshire Hathaway's Geico and Men's Wearhouse have already said they've taken steps to ensure their ads will no longer appear during Fox News' "Glenn Beck" show. Procter & Gamble and S.C. Johnson recently said they had never intended to advertise on the show and ads were placed there by mistake. Now Clorox Co. has said it is taking its ad dollars out of all politically oriented talk programs.

I appreciate that some sponsors would think that airing their commercials in a charged broadcast environment would hazard the loss of potential product buyers. But is that necessarily true?

Of course not. These sponsors have been threatened openly with a boycott of their products by an agency created and formerly managed by a man who is now one of the President's annointed-but-unappointed "Czars." They've been told in no uncertain terms that if they advertise in, say, Beck's show, no one on the Left will use their products. Of course, by withdrawing their ads, they lose the opportunity to replace those users with users who are politically on the Right.

It becomes, for the advertisers, a lose-lose situation. And by agreeing to withdraw advertising because of a potential boycott, they are agreeing to become the victim of extortion. In a just world the RICO statutes and laws would swing into play and heads would roll and bodies would wind up spending decades in 8x10 foot rooms with locked doors and roomates named Big Oscar.

Think about it: a sponsor who is airing commercials for their product, say an auto insurance company, on the Glenn Beck show on FNC, is using Beck's audience numbers to preach to his choir, to, hopefully, add them to their client list. By going along with the threat, does that mean that the insurance company is not interested in adding his viewers to the roles of their paying customers? Are they really willing to give away the potential of millions of dollars in added revenue? Certainly not. But they're being forced to, and that's extortion.

And, by the way, I have no respect at all for the sponsors who say "Well, we never meant for our spots to air in his show" and then continue their ad schedule in other "approved" (or not yet condemned) dayparts.

Advertisers and their media buyers buy by the numbers. Or at least they should, if the media buyers are treating their clients honestly. If Show A gets 2 million viewers and Show B gets 300k viewers, the choice is pretty clear where the spots should be placed. Or at least it should be.

The charges of racism? That's a whole 'nother issue. But I will remind you that The Boy Who Cried Wolf was, in the end, eventually eaten by said wolf. And boycotts can swing both ways.

What do you think would happen if five million Republicans told Wal-Mart that they'd stop shopping there tomorrow if they quit advertising on Beck's show?

I'm thoroughly embarassed by the industries in which I worked for all these years.

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