This is a very pleasant surprise. My friends at Brave New Films recently launched a campaign to target sponsors of right-wing shock-jock Michael Savage’s nationally syndicated radio show. If you’re not familiar with Savage, imagine what Rush Limbaugh would sound like with twice as much hate and half the sense of humor. Media Matters has some of this clown’s recent notable on-air comments.
Those of us on the left have seen these kind of efforts to implore to advertisers before, but in most instances, the campaigns come up short and fizzle out. This one, thankfully, produced results. Sam Stein reports:
At least four major firms have pulled advertising from Michael Savage’s nationally syndicated radio show following a campaign highlighting his inflammatory rhetoric. One other company, Geico insurance, is expected to follow suit.
The campaign, launched recently by Brave New Films, generated thousands of calls urging advertisers on the Savage Nation show to sever financial ties to the widely popular (and frequently offensive) talk host. In less than a week, four agreed to pull their ads from the show, including Union Bank of California (whose representative says they were advertisers on the Savage show by mistake and were glad to be taken off), Intuit, Chattem, ITT Technical Institute.
“We are thrilled at the amazing response of the true patriots all over the blogosphere who responded to our NOSAVAGE campaign,” Robert Greenwald, head of the film company, said in a statement. “People have called and emailed and the responsible sponsors have responded by pulling their ads and asking that their ads not be on this racist and hateful show.”
I suspect, in most instances, these major corporate advertisers had no idea what they were subsidizing. A company wants to reach a large audience, they see a show with big ratings, so they buy ads. This campaign helped show some of these advertisers exactly what they were paying for, and to their credit, the companies severed their ties. Kudos all around.
Of course, not all of Savage’s advertisers are distancing themselves from his on-air bile.
The USO, a non-profit that does work for U.S. armed forces, wrote Brave New Films complaining about being targeted and even hinting at a lawsuit. The organization’s lawyer Tony Bisceglie says it does not pay for the USO public service announcements that air on Savage’s show.
“As a tax exempt not-for-profit organization, regulated by the Attorney General’s Office of the state of California and the Internal Revenue Service, your organization may not engage in making false statements to solicit public support,” Bisceglie wrote to Brave New Films. “Therefore, please take the necessary steps to remove USO from your website entirely to avoid further action on our part.”
Bisceglie denied that the USO is considering legal action. But John Hanson, a spokesman for the USO, said the organization could ask for its PSAs to be taken off of Savage’s program, and wouldn’t. “Because then who is next?” he asked. “We provide no revenue for Michael Savage. We may improve his image. But we provide no revenue for him.”
The reasoning was not enough to impress officials at Brave New Films who called it a lost opportunity for the USO.
“Considering the USO’s role in the world,” said Leighton Woodhouse, a spokesperson for Brave New Films, “we would have expected them to be the first to distance themselves from someone who is deliberately fanning the flames of hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims; we were sorely disappointed.”
If you haven’t seen it, here’s Brave New Film’s video on Savage. One hopes USO officials might want to take a look. (If you’re planning to watch it, you may want to keep some pepto handy.)
Nice work, Brave New Films.