The old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity may apply to Fox News Channel anchor Laura Ingraham.
Advertisers in droves began fleeing her political commentary show The Ingraham Angle, which airs weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on Fox News, after Ingraham got into a petty and well-publicized social media dispute with a prominent Parkland high school gun control advocate, for which she subsequently apologized. The student, David Hogg, had already tweeted out a list of Ingraham advertisers, however, and the rest is history. He also apparently declined to accept her apology.
Ingraham reportedly lost 27 advertisers in the controversy, although MyPillow is sticking with her and Ace Hardware recently announced that it is resuming airing its commercials on her show. Parenthetically, there have also been calls for a counter-boycott.
In a statement, a Fox News exec previously said the network would "not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts." Ingraham also received support from an ideological foe, Bill Maher, who implied that she was the one who was being bullied and not the other way around.
Upon her return from an Easter week vacation that was supposedly pre-planned, Laura Ingraham's ratings surged substantially, The Wrap reported.
"But in her return to the airwaves last week, she was up 25 percent in total viewers and 36 percent in the key 25-54 demo, compared to her averages for the first three months of the year. She averaged 3,099,000 total viewers and 685,000 in the 25-54 demo."
The boycott was pushed "by Media Matters for America among other liberal-leaning groups," the Washington Free Beacon noted.
Her show also received a huge spike on Friday night with coverage of the allied bombing raid on Syria, resulting in The Ingraham Angle being the No. 1 show on cable news with about 4.7 million viewers and 1 million-plus in the demo, the Washington Times reported.
