Having worked in corporate America for most of my life during my 30+ year career in public relations, I can attest to her being ruthless. I’ve seen great people throughout my career get fired when something goes wrong. I also saw some of my superiors leave who deserved it. Somebody has to take the blame. True or false, there is always a scapegoat.
Over the past few days, some big news has broken out – we’ll get to the bigger news in a moment. Following Bud Light’s self-made disaster of a digital campaign with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, two marketing managers (working in marketing most of my life, I know marketers are usually to blame) took “leave of absence” after right-wing extremists boycotted Bud Light – and our community, especially that called by the lawyer last week – saw beer sales plummet.
Parent company Anheuser-Busch, after releasing an excruciatingly hesitant statement last week, then one from its CEO, issued another ridiculously worded gibberish: “We’ve made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most experienced marketers are more closely connected to all aspects of our brand business. »
Translation: “We are getting rid of creative thinkers, those who have taken a thoughtful risk to try to update our old brand fog to reach a younger demographic: the consumers of the future. They will be replaced by longtime corporate executives who want the brand to stay as it is, fall behind other beer brands that cater to younger audiences, and one where Kid Rock and Ted Nugent continue to to be washed-out brand ambassadors rather than a hip, young trans woman with over 10 million young followers.
Anheuser-Busch lost a huge opportunity to engage a younger, more open-minded audience, choosing to prioritize its “current” results and, in doing so, alienating old and young. His future does not bode well.
For a television network, low ratings are only tolerated for so long because advertisers only work with winners. And CNN’s revamped morning show, CNN this morning, was an epic failure, which means meager advertising dollars. Perhaps the biggest reason for the show’s failure was all the controversy that longtime CNN anchor Don Lemon brought to the early morning hours. Reports of his vindictiveness, temper and sexist comments have plagued him constantly since the start of the year.
When he was canned on Monday morning, he feigned surprise. “I’m stunned after 17 years at CNN, I would have thought someone in management would have the decency to tell me directly,” he wrote on Twitter. do the work that I loved to network. Clearly there are bigger issues at play.”
Really Don? The biggest problem is that you lose money to a big company, cut into their bottom line, and to stem the bleed, they squeeze out a bad lemon. American companies owe you nothing. And why would anyone be surprised that CNN dumped him bluntly? I can only imagine the visceral reaction he got from all the women in the network. And if the network had given him time to “disconnect”, who knows what the unpredictable Lemon would have said.
Then, drum roll please, came the news that shocked and thrilled us all, Fox News parting ways with its golden boy and America’s biggest jerk, Tucker Carlson. First of all, I wasn’t shocked in the least, and I actually predicted this would happen. For what? Well, Rupert Murdoch runs a giant corporation for shareholders who are all obsessed with what? You guessed it, the bottom line. Fox wisely chose to settle the Dominion case without a jury trial; however, this included a whopping $787.5 million price tag. Inevitably, someone had to pay the price.
Male-dominated Fox News and Murdoch-controlled News Corp. weren’t going to risk appearing sexist and blaming wife Maria Bartiromo or Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, especially given the Fox’s poor record on sexual harassment.
I wrote several times in recent years how dangerous Carlson was to our community, so there’s no reason to dwell on the venom he spilled our way. He was deplorable, disgusting, despicable. His comments after the Club Q shooting were grotesquely sickening. He was an enemy to us, to decency and honesty. He, Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh will surely all burn in hell together one day.
Keeping Carlson at Fox would have been a dangerous move for the company, primarily because of all the revelations of him knowingly lying that have aired, most notably the text and emails implicating Carlson and his hypocrisy. Plus, the Abby Grossberg case hangs over Fox and Carlson. She was a producer on his show, and her attorney says they have 90 tapes of what could be explosive conversations about the horror that is Private Carlson. Could there be something in these tapes – pretending his audience was stupid? – which further prompted Fox to give Carlson a firm boot.
Fox will most likely bite the bullet in the short term as viewers either call for a boycott or stop watching in droves. As he signed the Dominion settlement, Fox looked at his results. The continuous cycle of revelations allegedly leaking out of a trial would have hammered his reputation and most likely created doubts in the minds of his audience – something that was already happening.
Dominion published so many private messages from Carlson, where he said he hated Donald Trump “passionately”, ripped into former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell with misogynistic comments and lambasted Rudy Giuliani; yet he continued to spew the lies that Trump and Powell were pedaling. Carlson’s credibility – as if he had any to begin with – was called into question.
Plus, Fox learned a huge lesson with the Dominion case. But what about Carlson? He continued to repeat lies, and his aim to spin conspiracy theories in order to boost his grades would continue to put Fox in legal danger, given the opening and closing of the Dominion case. There’s a line at the door ready to sue Fox – and Carlson himself.
If you saw 60 minutes Sunday night you would have saw a victim of Carlson who, in all likelihood, could now bring a case against him. Carlson said Trump supporter Ray Epps was an FBI lackey who sparked the Capitol insurgency on Jan. 6. Epps said of Carlson, “He’s obsessed with me. He’s going in every way possible to destroy my life.
For Fox, the settlement was smart, and Carlson’s departure was an offshoot of a network desperately trying to hold on to its own credibility. Carlson was an albatross around the neck and a severe handicap. There are other loudmouth liars who can replace Carlson at Fox who might be more careful not to defame individuals or companies. While we can celebrate Carlson’s release now, we shouldn’t rush too much.
Carlson will most likely be picked up by Newsmax or some fringe media, or maybe his subscribers will follow him on a video podcast, so he’s not going to go away, but won’t his audience love him now that he doesn’t play for the local team? Or worse and scarier, is Carlson running for president?
Finally, the media reports that Carlson’s firing was sudden, which was the only way Fox could get rid of him. If that had given him more airtime after announcing he was leaving the network, God only knows what he would have said. Fox’s decision to just rip the band-aid off was the only scenario that would work.
But do not get me wrong. On the contrary, Fox could become even more extreme in an effort to show his audience that Carlson was not an outlier. He may have to go that route if he wants to be Trump’s mouthpiece in the 2024 election.
My thoughts are with the marketing executives at Anheuser-Busch “on leave”. Don Lemon, unfortunately, created his own shooting story arc. And as for Carlson, karma is ab*tch. Hopefully, now that he’s a private citizen, more people will be forced to keep his feet on fire and sue him for all the hurt and pain he’s caused. Maybe leaving him alone is what Fox is hoping for.
John Casey is editor of the lawyer.
The opinions expressed in the lawyerOpinion pieces are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the lawyer or our parent company, equalpride.