If the financial fallout from the O’Reilly backlash was relatively minor — many advertisers simply shifted their spending to other Fox News programs
— it was difficult to ignore the public image of at least 50 major brands withdrawing support from the network’s most popular host.
Days later, the Fox News star Bill O’Reilly was out — taking with him a payout of up to $25 million — a strikingly swift fall ushered in by an advertising exodus
that rattled the highest reaches of the Fox empire and delivered an unsettling message to corporate America: You’re on notice.
“You need to be able to mobilize supporters to mount enough public pressure
that they feel they need to respond,” Angelo Carusone, the president of the liberal website Media Matters and a veteran of advertiser boycott campaigns, said of Fox News.
In interviews, leaders of the online campaign to topple Mr. O’Reilly said they believed
that while Fox News management would stand behind its star anchor, the network might be vulnerable to other pressures.
Companies are “a bit on edge about how they engage and react in this moment,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, an online racial justice group
that encouraged its million-plus members to protest Mr. O’Reilly’s behavior.
Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, said Fox News probably recognized
that installing a replacement anchor for Mr. O’Reilly would not necessarily lead to a giant drop-off in viewers.