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GM Pulls Ads from John & Ken Show
The conservative radio talk show hosts John & Ken apologized for the threatening calls listeners made to an immigrant rights group, but that hasn't done much to dampen the enthusiasm of a boycott against the show.
GM has said that a local dealer who had purchased ads on the John & Ken Show was planning on pulling them. The GM twitter feed has been clogged up with messages from the last few days explaining to boycotters that they were talking to the local dealer who bought the ads and that they were working on pulling their ads "as quickly as we can."
Advertisers were already pulling out: Verizon and AT&T Wireless yanked their ads, and grocers Vons and Ralphs, who have run ads on the show in the past, said they would not do so again.
The boycott against the show got started when controversial hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou read the phone number of local advocate Jorge-Mario Cabrera of the Coalition of Humane Immigration Rights of L.A. (CHIRLA) on the air as part of their campaign to drum up public dissent for the passage and signing into law of the California DREAM Act. Cabrera reported receiving multiple harassing calls, and his organization launched a boycott against the show for promoting hate speech.
John & Ken didn't apologize for giving out the number and they pooh-poohed any reports that advertisers were pulling out in their apology. They did apologize for any threatening calls Cabrera received (without totally taking responsibility): "And it’s kind of silly because we’ve got a million-two listeners, and if you have a million-two listeners there’s always gonna be a guy, or two guys, or five guys, who go crazy. But, we have been trying to tell Jorge that we here at the John and Ken show, we apologize for the hateful or any illegal calls that he received."
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