On Tuesday Noon, Mercedes & BMW. Allstate Plus Five More Advertisers Cut Ties To Fox News 'The O'Reilly Factor'

In the last few hours, six more advertisers joined Mercedes-Benz yesterday and Hyundai early Tuesday in pulling their advertising from the 'The O'Reilly Factor' show. BMW of North America; GlaxoSmithKline; Allstate; Constant Contact, an online marketer; Untuckit, a men’s clothing distributor; and Sanofi Consumer HealthCare, which advertised products like ACT mouthwash on Mr. O’Reilly’s show, have pulled their ad dollars, reports an updated article at the New York Times.

Marketing representatives stated that they will monitor the situation regarding the claims against Bill O'Reilly, but there is no doubt that losing eight advertisers in 24 hrs. is an emergency room issue for both Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, as well as the entire Rupert Murdoch family. 

Scandal and turmoil returned to Fox News on Monday, with ousted chairman Roger Ailes becoming the subject of a new sexual  harassment lawsuit. Also on Monday, the New York Times published a scathing investigation that found five women who made allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate allegations against him. The five women charging O'Reilly received settlements totaling about $13 million according to the Times.

“Given the importance of women in every aspect of our business, we don’t feel this is a good environment in which to advertise our products right now,” Donna Boland, the manager of corporate communications for Mercedes-Benz, wrote in an email. Mercedes-Benz has spent an estimated $1.9 million in ads on “The O’Reilly Factor” in the last year, according to iSpot.tv, the TV ad analytics firm.

In a separate article Monday evening, the Times cited a difficult situation in dealing with money-machine O'Reilly.  Ratings are up significantly under most cable news shows in the Trump era and O'Reilly's are no exception. Viewers are likely to dismiss the women's claims, but advertisers control the purse strings. 

If more advertisers abandon Mr. O’Reilly’s show, it would be a blow to Fox News, which provides billions of dollars in revenue each year to its parent company, 21st Century Fox. Mr. O’Reilly has long been the pugnacious face of a prime-time lineup that sets the tone for conservative commentary. His show attracts almost 4 million viewers a night, and from 2014 through 2016 it generated more than $446 million in advertising revenue, according to the research firm Kantar Media.

The situation today at Fox News has to be critical. 

Savannah Cunningham, In Center Of Marine Online Misogyny Scandal, Starts Basic Training In April

Controversy has swirled around Savannah Cunningham, who has long aspired to become a Marine, for months. Savannah was the subject of lewd messages from men as she also learned that an all-male group of Marines was circulating a nude video of her on Facebook, thanks to a former boyfriend. 

"It was such a creepy invasion of privacy," Savannah told theNew York Times. "They were actively seeking nude images of me, anything they could get their hands on."

Most likely a majority of women would turn and run when confronted with this raw misogyny in Marine culture. Not Savannah. Cunningham ships off to basic training the first week of April. Checking on her Twitter feed, on March 4 -- just as news of the Marine scandal was breaking, Sav Cunningham posted: "Very happy, excited, & humbled right now. I am the top female poolee in all of Arizona. "

“Someone needs to stand up and say this does not represent the values of the Marine Corps,” Savannah said. “If not me, then who? Yes, for a long time it was a boys’ club, but there needs to be progress.” Read on In-Depth.

Women Artists Score Big In Virtual Reality, Scoring Big In Male-Dominated Tech Space

A mere tech child or not, virtual reality is expected to be a $150 billion industry by 2020. In Virtual Reality, Women Run the World writes New York Magazine . Silicon Valley and gaming Internet culture in general are known for their hard-ass mentality about women in their midst. Because virtual reality is truly an original opportunity for creators, women are -- for once -- operating in a relatively level playing field. There is “no formalized industry, and therefore no industry hierarchy, making it particularly welcoming to outsiders and newcomers,” explains Julia Kaganskiy, director of the New Museum’s New Inc. incubator. “Effectively everyone is a newcomer, and there are virtually no insiders.”

Women populate VR panels, conferences, support groups, and mentor relationships in significant numbers. Four of the 11 virtual-reality projects in the New York Film Festival’s Convergence division, a creative combo of VR and immersive storytelling, were created by women. and Convergence programmer Matt Bolish, a Convergence programmer, says in the five years of the program, “women have not only been at the forefront as creators, but as producers, writers, and financiers."

Women made a strong showing at the New Frontier VR exhibition at Sundance this past January. Helping celebrate the 10th anniversary of the program,  40% or a record 13 of the 32 lead artists on VR projects were women. “This is really a powerful medium and we have to make sure we do better this time,” says Kamal Sinclair, who directs the New Frontier Labs program. “We saw how women dropped out of computer science in the early ’80s. They were there in the beginning. How do we make sure we learn from those missteps?”