Laura Ingraham returns to Fox News, more advertisers flee

Laura Ingraham returned to Fox News Monday night after a week-long vacation, but many of her advertisers did not. A group of former advertisers in the show are avoiding "The Ingraham Angle" after the host wrote on Twitter last month that Parkland, Florida, school-shooting survivor David Hogg "whined" about not getting into the colleges of his choice. While Ingraham apologized for the remark, the student gun activist encouraged advertisers to boycott her show. In response, advertisers including Liberty Mutual, Hulu and Johnson & Johnson pulled their commercials from the program and have not returned. Ingraham last week went on a planned spring-break vacation with her children, according to Fox News. On March 30, the last episode she hosted before that break, 15 ads ran from 13 marketers, according to iSpot.TV. Monday night's return episode included nine commercials from seven advertisers. Advertisers in the Monday episode include the in-home care organization Visiting Angels, MyPillow, water filter brand ZeroWater, SlimFast, Lear Capital, Bavarian Edge and Beaches resorts. The April 6 episode of "The Ingraham Angle," which was hosted by Pete Hegseth, had 13 ads from 10 brands, according to iSpot. While SlimFast did air a spot in Monday night's episode, according to iSpot, the company said on Twitter on Tuesday that it has stopped advertising in "The Ingraham Angle" and has no plans to return in the near future. We have stopped advertising on the Laura Ingraham show and have no plans to resume in the near future. We are also monitoring all ad placements carefully. In her return Monday night, Ingraham promised to fight left-leaning "Stalinist" efforts to keep conservatives from speaking freely. "Their objective is a total transformation of American society not through rational discourse and open debate, but through demonization and silencing," she said. Ingraham's first episode back from vacation drew an audience better than her average so far this year. Monday's "The Ingram Angle" averaged 2.81 million viewers and a 0.5 rating in the 25-to-54 demographic that TV news advertisers buy against, or about 603,450 viewers in the demo. In the first quarter of this year, by comparison, the show averaged 2.45 million viewers and a 0.42 rating in the demo. Fox News is sticking by Ingraham. The expectation internally is that the media attention will blow over and advertisers will quietly return to the show. In the interim, some of the advertisers that have pulled out of "The Ingraham Angle" have shifted their dollars elswhere on Fox News or have simply delayed their ads to a later date, according to a person familiar with the situation. Contributing: Anthony Crupi

Laura Ingraham returns to Fox News, more advertisers flee

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