UPS Stops Advertising on Fox News

Well, that call for a boycott against Glenn Beck's FNC show really backfired, didn't it?

33 companies have removed advertising from Glenn Beck's show or have requested Fox that ads run elsewhere in the day. This isn't really news, as it's been posted and discussed everywhere.

What is news? UPS "has temporarily halted buying ads on Fox News Channel as a whole" (AP). UPS's spokesman declines to say how long this moratorium will last, but UPS is a huge company, and this could signal the beginning of a serious shift in media. As political talk show hosts grow more hyperbolic and histrionic, chances are that advertisers will become less eager to associate themselves with divisive characters--be they Olbermann, Hannity, or Dobbs--who may alienate the broader public. Clorox, for example, has declared that it will no longer advertise on any political talk shows. But if companies begin yanking ads from entire networks . . . well, then networks will be forced to make changes. Otherwise, what's the point? They'd be losing monies regardless of their audience share.

Also, a good read: Russ Smith on American political dialogue: "Our Never-Ending Political Anger." Smith situates the health care debate along a continuum of similar arguments in the past, and he asserts that the anger expressed in the current argument--over health care--serves as a sort of catch-all for our collective dissatisfaction with government. Smith concludes, that, unfortunately, the current discussion about health care is, or has become, only oppositional: "The issue has become like abortion, you're either for it or against it, and no middle ground exists."