Remember the
Air America advertiser blacklist? Dozens of companies demanded that their ads not be aired on Air America programming. While listening to Rush Limbaugh on Friday and Monday to find
the local sponsors here in San Diego, I heard ads for a number of national companies, including for JC Penney (also on
Media Matters' list of advertisers on WABC) and for the HP Folio. Those two companies were the only ones adverstising who were also blacklisting Air America. More after the jump.
HP and JC Penney were not on the list of national advertisers for Limbaugh's program. As ipsos points out:
These are either "agency buys," in which a national ad agency buys time on local stations around the country for national advertisers, or they're "network spots" that the station runs during local time in exchange for getting network newscasts or other syndicated programming.
The companies will argue that they didn't deliberately buy advertisng on Limbaugh's program:
. . . they don't actually "buy time on Rush," but they buy time on a network that's carried by a local Rush station, or they make an agency buy that happens to include spots during the Rush show. The advertiser really may have no way of knowing its ads are running during the show...
As the Air America blacklist and the actions of other companies shows, advertisers can direct that their advertising not appear on certain shows. We need to put pressure on HP and JC Penney to block their advertising from appearing on Limbaugh's programming, just as they block it with Air America.
Here is the contact information:
Hewlett Packard
To send a message to the CEO
The CEO is Meg Whitman, who ran as a Republican for governor of California. So I don't know how effective this will be. On the other hand, Carly Fiorina, the former CEO, is also a Republican and came out strongly against Limbaugh.
General inquiries phone number: 800-752-0900
JC Penney
To send a general inquiry
Sure, JC Penney was good on Ellen, but we need for them to pull out here.
9:41 PM PT: JC Penney dropped their ads.