Lowe’s breaks with O’Reilly

July 28, 2007

As part of the response to Bill O’Reilly latest offensive against blogs, the netroots pressured Lowe’s to end its advertising of the Fox News personality’s talk show.

It worked. Here’s part of a letter sent to a Lowe’s customer who had complained about the chain’s advertising.

Thank you for your comments regarding the program, The O’Reilly Factor.

Lowe’s has strict guidelines that govern the placement of our advertising. Our company advertises primarily in national, network prime-time television programs and on a variety of cable outlets.

Lowe’s constantly reviews advertising buys to make certain they are consistent with its policy guidelines. The O’Reilly Factor does not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, and the company’s advertising will no longer appear during the program. (emphasis added)

O’Reilly really isn’t going to respond well to this.

As for the next step, it looks like Home Depot is the next company of interest.

I used to go to Lowes because Home Depot sucks. Now I can go because they got balls.

  • Companies should have a list of venues they advertise in just like fast food joints should have a list of their ingredients.

    And taxpayers should have a line-item veto on their tax usage.

  • Sweet. Bill “Loofah” O’Reilly has skin like a rhino (not to mention a brain like a rhino), and insults just bounce off of him like pistachios off your buddy’s forehead when he’s passed out. In the pocket, though, is where it will hurt. Can you FEEL IT, Bill? I bet that’ll put some extra zing in his sanctimonious rant.

  • Losing Lowe’s as an advertiser is O’Reilly fault. He make it personal” by going after Jet Blue for having a sponsoring deal with the Yearly Kos conference. And he’s been lambasting the Daily Kos site as a “hate speech” site with all sorts of name-calling by him.

  • Memekiller….

    Lowes may suck where you live.
    But where I live the situation is completely reversed.
    The two stores are less than 2 miles apart.
    And…
    Lowes is clean, well-stocked, and eager to please.
    Home Depot is a rude and tangled mess:
    Like an xray of a repug brain with advanced Alzheimer’s…

    Whomever is running that store ought to be sent to DC to run Homeland security, or Fema, or maybe McCain’s campaign…

    Those are just the facts on the ground here.
    Truly: It is that flagrant a comparison.

    Now in regards to the politics….

  • I also read that they made a similar promise to a consumer in February so perhaps someone needs to watch that they do what they say this time.

  • BO started this so I’m pleased to see it coming back to bite him. In all but the most egregious cases, however, harassing advertisers based on the politics of where they advertise strikes me as kind of odd. Now, some group can attack Lowe’s for advertising on Countdown (?), and another will attack JetBlue for advertising on BO (?), and what is gained? Everything offends somebody these days. Just sayin…

  • Losing one sponsor for a TV show does not compensate for losing a major sponsor of a one-time event. Yearly Kos was relying on JetBlue; FOX News simply reschedules more compliant advertisers to the O’Reilly slot as they shift the Lowes ads to the hours immediately before and after his show.

    Now, if everyone agreed that O’Reilly’s show wasn’t worth sponsoring, FOX News would have an hour (plus repeats) of programming that they can’t fill with ads. If FOX wanted to support O’Reilly, though, they could pack the rest of their schedule with ads and run the Factor commercial-free. In theory. And that would be a bit extreme. And such a move would make the O’Reilly boycotters more likely to take ads off FOX entirely (assuming they aren’t simply taking for symbolic, harmless action to assuage the left-web).

  • Lowes may suck where you live. — ROTFL, @5

    That’s what you get for reading and rolling on the floor at the same time… You’ve completely mis-read what memekiller (@1) said, which was that, in his area, *Home Depot* sucks. Apparently, same as in your area.

  • Home Depot’s owners fund ultraright wing nuts for state judicial positions. Don’t expect them to back down from O’Reilly. They probably will increase their advertising since his politics is their politics. I refuse to give Bernie Marcus a penny of my money.

  • I go to Menards. I save big money.
    re: broadcasting revenues – –
    It’s not likely that sponsors are going to pull ads from one of the top rated shows on cable tv.

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