Fox Noise fires Bill O’Reilly; bigmouth’s downfall was activist-led advertiser exodus

Bill O’Reil­ly, host of the high­est rat­ed pro­gram at the Fox Noise Chan­nel, has been forced out of the net­work after exec­u­tives at its par­ent com­pa­ny 21st Cen­tu­ry Fox con­clud­ed that his show could no longer be effec­tive­ly mon­e­tized due to a mass exo­dus of adver­tis­ers cat­alyzed by deter­mined activists.

Mul­ti­ple women who for­mer­ly worked with O’Reil­ly at Fox have come for­ward over the years — with sev­er­al speak­ing out just recent­ly — to say that they were sex­u­al­ly harassed by him. Respond­ing to the alle­ga­tions, activists reached out to O’Reil­ly’s adver­tis­ers to urge them to walk away from his show, and many have.

That prompt­ed exec­u­tives at 21st Cen­tu­ry Fox, includ­ing Rupert Mur­doch’s sons, to reex­am­ine O’Reil­ly’s future at Fox Noise Channel.

Today, they announced their verdict.

“After a thor­ough and care­ful review of the alle­ga­tions, the Com­pa­ny and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be return­ing to the Fox News Chan­nel,” the com­pa­ny announced in a terse state­ment released a short time ago.

“Fox News was forced to act,” said Media Mat­ters Pres­i­dent Ange­lo Caru­sone.

“They had years to address ser­i­al sex­u­al harass­ment at Fox News. They didn’t; they actu­al­ly enabled it. So, indi­vid­u­als and groups took action to edu­cate adver­tis­ers. Adver­tis­ers fled because they imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized what Fox News has ignored for over a decade: that ser­i­al sex­u­al harass­ment is not only wrong, but bad for busi­ness. With­out adver­tis­ers, Bill O’Reilly’s show was no longer com­mer­cial­ly viable.”

“Fox News had no choice but to fire O’Reilly. Account­abil­i­ty came from the out­side, not from with­in. Fox News deserves no acco­lades, only scorn for the indus­tri­al scale of harass­ment they have forced their employ­ees to endure.”

Caru­sone also called for the ouster of the net­work’s co-pres­i­dent Bill Shine, an enabler of the net­work’s tox­ic work­place environment.

O’Reil­ly is cur­rent­ly on vaca­tion in Italy; fol­low­ing the begin­ning of his planned hia­tus from his show, The New York Times ratch­eted up the pres­sure on his boss­es by report­ing new alle­ga­tions against him.

The lat­est alle­ga­tion against Mr. O’Reilly came on Tues­day when a woman who pre­vi­ous­ly worked at Fox News called a 21st Cen­tu­ry Fox hot­line to report alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al and racial harass­ment against him, accord­ing to her lawyer, Lisa Bloom.

The woman, who is not seek­ing mon­ey, want­ed to stay anony­mous to avoid the news media spot­light but thought that it was impor­tant to report her alle­ga­tions to the com­pa­ny, Ms. Bloom said.

Ms. Bloom said the woman, who is African-Amer­i­can, worked in a cler­i­cal posi­tion at the net­work but did not work direct­ly for Mr. O’Reilly. The woman report­ed that in 2008, Mr. O’Reilly would stop by her desk and grunt like a “wild boar”; he would also stand back to allow her to exit the ele­va­tor first and then say, “Look­ing good, girl,” Ms. Bloom said. Mr. O’Reilly leered at the woman’s cleav­age and legs and called her “hot choco­late,” Ms. Bloom said.

O’Reil­ly has been the face of the Fox Noise Chan­nel for a very long time, and Fox has kept him around even after learn­ing that O’Reil­ly was a sex­u­al predator.

Watch the doc­u­men­tary Out­foxed from Brave New Films to see some of Bil­l’s most infa­mous moments from the ear­ly years of his show.

The net­work has repeat­ed­ly shelled out large sums of mon­ey to buy the silence of O’Reil­ly’s accusers. But that prac­tice became unten­able after O’Reil­ly’s adver­tis­ers van­ished. The big­mouth’s view­er­ship has nev­er been bet­ter, but a show with­out adver­tis­ers is not worth much to a for-prof­it media conglomerate.

The ouster of Bill O’Reil­ly is a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of the strug­gle to hold the Repub­li­can Noise Machine account­able for its degra­da­tion of our pub­lic dis­course. O’Reil­ly was a promi­nent cog in that machine. And it should be not­ed that he did­n’t just use his perch at the net­work to spew right wing pro­pa­gan­da. He also used it to become filthy rich. He branched out from his Fox prime­time show to cre­ate an entire fran­chise, prin­ci­pal­ly dri­ven by lucra­tive book deals.

This arrange­ment no doubt would have con­tin­ued if O’Reil­ly’s show had con­tin­ued to enjoy the patron­age of com­pa­nies like…

ADT, Advil, Ainsworth Pet Nutri­tion, Aller­gan, All­state, Ami­ca Insur­ance, AncestryDNA.com, Ang­ie’s List, AstraZeneca, Bam­boo HR, Bausch + Lomb, Bay­er, Been­Ver­i­fied, Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau of Chica­go, BMW of North Amer­i­ca, Cap­i­tal One, CARFAX, Cold­well Banker, Con­stant Con­tact, Con­sumer Cel­lu­lar, Cred­it Kar­ma, Crowne Plaza Hotels, E*TRADE, Eli Lil­ly, Esurance, Flex Seal, Fresh­pet, Geico, Glax­o­SmithK­line, GoodRx, H&R Block, Home Advi­sor, Hulu, Hyundai, Infini­ti, InnoGames, It’s Just Lunch, Jen­ny Craig, Land Rover, Laser Spine Institue, Legal­Zoom, Lend­ingTree, Lexus, Lib­er­ty Mutu­al, Lum­ber Liq­uida­tors, Mahin­dra, Mat­tress Firm, Mer­cedes-Benz, MileIQ, Mir­a­cle Ear, Mit­subishi, Moberg Phar­ma, Mon­san­to, Next Day Blinds, Old Domin­ion Freight Line, Orkin, Pacif­ic Life, Pelo­ton, Per­il­lo Tours, Pfiz­er, Pro­gres­sive, The Propane Coun­cil, Red­di Wip, Ring.com, Sanofi, Scot­tevest, Soci­ety for Human Resource Man­age­ment, South­ern New Hamp­shire Uni­ver­si­ty, Stan­ley Steemer, Sub­aru, Sunsweet Grow­ers, T. Rowe Price, Touch­note, Triva­go, True­Car, UNTUCK­it, Ver­i­zon, Vision­Works, Voya Finan­cial, Way­Fair, Weath­erTech, The Won­der­ful Com­pa­ny, and Xfin­i­ty

… all of whom pulled their adver­tis­ing from “The Fac­tor” in recent weeks.

(Hat tip to Media Mat­ters for the compilation).

At long last, O’Reil­ly has been removed from his prime­time Fox perch. His show is over. The O’Reil­ly Fac­tor will con­tin­ue with guest host Dana Peri­no until Fri­day, then it will be replaced by a pro­gram host­ed by Tuck­er Carlson.