King Marketing

ABC/Disney operates a US-wide network of radio stations and affiliates. One of these affiliates, San Francisco’s KSFO, is a die-hard right-wing talk shop whose rabidly eliminationist hosts have publicly endorsed (if not outright revelled in) torture and engaged in hate speech of all stripes. However, the station is sold to its advertisers as a “Disney” station, with all the connotations of family-friendliness that entails.

Self-described “fifth-tier blogger” Spocko decided to “out” KSFO to its national advertisers with a polite letter-writing campaign, and by exposing their hate speech on his blog with short audio clips and transcripts (which falls under the Fair Use statutes.)

Faced with the fact that their national brands were being tarnished, many advertisers including Visa and MasterCard pulled their spots. Hit thus in the pocketbook, KSFO’s response was to use their Disney legal muscle to get Spocko’s blog taken offline under transparently false claims of copyright infringement. (Now hosted at Online BlogIntegrity for your horrified amusement.)

The branding blowback from this story: KSFO paints itself as a Disney station to advertisers, but as an ABC affiliate to listeners, in hopes that ABC News credibility would rub off on them. Instead, if anything’s “rubbed off,” it’s in the other direction – a sticky blob of hate speech in the Mouse’s fur.