20 companies pull ads from O’Reilly’s show

A growing number of major advertisers are pulling their commercials from “The O’Reilly Factor” following a report that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paid $13 million to five women in settlements over allegations of sexual harassment.

As of Tuesday evening, 20 companies had pulled their ads from the Fox prime-time cable program, according to a report by CNN.

{mosads}Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW of North America, Mitsubishi Motors, Lexus, Constant Contact, Bayer, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, Orkin, UNTUCKit, Allstate, Esurance, T. Rowe Price, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Credit Karma, Wayfair, TrueCar, the Society for Human Resource Management and The Wonderful Company all pulled ads from the program, CNN reports. 

Fox News said in a statement Tuesday that the ads had been moved to other programs on the network.

“We value our partners and are working with them to address their current concerns about the O’Reilly Factor. At this time, the ad buys of those clients have been re-expressed into other FNC programs,” said Paul Rittenberg, Fox’s executive vice president of advertising sales.

O’Reilly did not address the report on his Monday night program, but in a statement over the weekend he said the settlements were made “to put to rest any controversies to spare my children.”

He has two teenage children.

“Just like other prominent and controversial people, I’m vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity,” the statement read. “In my more than 20 years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline.”

Updated at 9:55 p.m.