The Catholic League protest of Samantha Bee’s TBS TV Show, “Full Frontal,” is paying dividends: sponsors continue to flee.
Her filthy show has long targeted Catholicism, but when she used a vulgar term to describe President Trump’s daughter, she went beyond obscene. We decided to take aim at her advertisers.
In the last issue of Catalyst, we cited the following sponsors who discontinued advertising on Bee’s show after we asked them to do so: Verizon, Procter and Gamble, Wendy’s, and Ashley HomeStore; the latter was very critical of her show.
Bee’s show took a few week hiatus in late June-early July, airing reruns. When it returned, so did we. We asked The Wonderful Company, producer of Wonderful Pistachios, to pull its ad. It did. We asked Popeyes to withdraw advertising. It did. We requested Burger King to do the same. It did not. Indeed, it continued to advertise for two more weeks, but we did not give up.
On August 15, after striking out with appeals to the Burger King CEO, we heard from Burger King president José Cil. When he learned of our concerns, he said, “our advertising plan never targeted this show in particular,” conceding that a “small number of our television ads have appeared.” The good news is that he said, “we won’t be advertising with this show going forward.” They did not.
This shows what can happen when we persevere. Yielding is for losers.
