Sean Hannity’s Fox News show reportedly loses sponsor

Over the course of the past 24 hours or so, a rather-large firestorm has started to take shape regarding Sean Hannity’s self-titled show on Fox News, and its role in covering the death of Seth Rich. After the network retracted much of its reporting on the late staffer, Hannity relented, continuing to push what many believed to be conspiracy theories. Last night, he reversed course after receiving a mass backlash on the internet, saying that he was doing so out of respect for Rich’s family, who requested that he cease reporting on the subject.

Hannity has still spoken on the matter on other mediums, and today one of the first advertisers in Cars.com has bailed on the show. In a statement (per Deadline), the company had the following to say regarding their decision:

“Cars.com’s media buy strategies are designed to reach as many consumers as possible across a wide spectrum of media channels … The fact that we advertise on a particular program doesn’t mean that we agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content. We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase.

“In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”

What is the lingering aftereffect going to be of this, if anything? At present, it is still a little bit too early to determine if there will be major consequences one way or another. The loss of advertisers seemed to be one of the things that pushed Fox News to cancel The O’Reilly Factor, but it remains to be seen what will be done here. The biggest thing to note is simply that Hannity is one of the network’s most-successful shows, and it also has the most pro-Donald Trump base presumably out of any program on the network. Therefore, if any show’s exit would create backlash on a massive level, it would be this one.

For now, it doesn’t appear as though anything will happen. Hannity did not express an interest in departing the show last night, and doesn’t seem to be planning that in the future, either.

Do you think there will be further ramifications when it comes to the present state of Hannity, and do you think a lot of this drama will blow over? Share in the comments. (Photo: Fox News.)