UPDATE: McDonald’s Is 10th Company to Pull KRXQ Advertising
June 5, 2009 by Andy Marra, Senior Media Strategist @ GLAAD
GLAAD just posted a recap of its activity relating to KRXQ and its offensive comments against transgender children. The summary also included a statement from AT&T announcing their decision to pull its advertising from the radio station. You can find all of that plus recent media coverage here.
Minutes after posting our recap, I received an email from McDonald’s at 9:17pm EST. Soon after I spoke with a member of the McDonald’s Public Relations team who wanted us to post and distribute their statement.
McDonald’s wrote:
McDonald’s has a proud legacy of diversity and inclusion. The views expressed by the hosts are not consistent with our core values.
As such, we are in the process of withdrawing advertising from KRXQ until further notice.
McDonald’s USA LLC, Pacific Sierra Region
The global fast food chain now becomes the tenth company to either retract or to not renew its advertising contract with KRXQ.
The entire listing of companies include:
- Chipotle
- Snapple
- Sonic
- Bank of America
- Verizon
- Carl’s Jr (CKE Restaurants)
- Wells Fargo
- Nissan North America
- AT&T
- McDonald’s
We continue urging people to voice their concerns with the radio station. Information can be found here.
Stay tuned for more details. Please check back with us for updates on this developing story.
Have an update to share with GLAAD? Send us a tweet on our Twitter account @glaad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/on-air-abuse-of-transgede_b_212121.html
New article.
I understand that the radio station wants to meet with GLAAD? I hope so as you really shook things up. In the 9 years I have been fighting this station, other than the FCC complaint I successfully filed against them, you guys have just rocked with taking all their sponsors away. Way to go GLAAD!!!
Entercom Communications Corporation: When Big Business Demonizes Innocent Children …
The community response to Sacramento radio station KRQX FM, following hateful and threatening remarks toward gender variant children on May 28th, has been overwhelming and gratifying. A GLAAD Call to Action and a remarkable report by Michael Rowe of th…
Congratulations!
From their site (http://www.robarnieanddawn.com/)
The word apology appears no where in this letter for a reason. We already hid from doing the right thing once and we’re not going to make that mistake again. Apologizing in a written, posted statement is a form of cowardice. We will say what needs to be said this Thursday.
On a final, personal note, as the leader and owner of the show, I have made the decision that we need to refrain from broadcasting new episodes until we can address this on Thursday . We will return to the air at 7:30 a.m. June 11th.
Rob Williams
Rob, Arnie And Dawn
oops. full text:
Updated June 7th, 2009, 11:50am
To our loyal Rob, Arnie And Dawn followers,
We have failed you. As a show, as people, as broadcasters, we have simply failed on almost every level.
We presented our opinions on a very sensitive subject in a hateful, childish and crude fashion; and then, given the opportunity to retract those remarks, we defended them.
Since then, you, our loyal listeners, have made it clear to us that we went too far. The response has been overwhelming. None of you said that we couldn’t have opinions, yet so many of you said that the way we gave them crossed the line. Further, you said that our attempt to mask our comments as “jokes that would be understood by our audience,” was unacceptable. I would say now that it was worse than that, it was cowardly. You have made that clear.
We have reached out to various groups and asked for a chance to make this right; to respond, with their participation, to the education that our audience has provided us. That opportunity has been graciously granted this Thursday morning, June 11th. At 7:30 a.m.
The word apology appears no where in this letter for a reason. We already hid from doing the right thing once and we’re not going to make that mistake again. Apologizing in a written, posted statement is a form of cowardice. We will say what needs to be said this Thursday.
On a final, personal note, as the leader and owner of the show, I have made the decision that we need to refrain from broadcasting new episodes until we can address this on Thursday . We will return to the air at 7:30 a.m. June 11th.
Rob Williams
Rob, Arnie And Dawn
[...] Jr (CKE Restaurants), Wells Fargo, Nissan North America, AT&T, and McDonald’s have all canceled their advertising contracts with KRXQ over that obnoxious segment ridiculing transgendered youth. Good for them. The hosts [...]
[...] the 11th confirmed advertiser to pull their contract from KRXQ. You can read more about the others here and [...]
[...] KRXQ refuses to apologize, then subsequently loses the following ten advertisers in response to the public outrage lead by [...]
[...] Grill, Snapple and Sonic Drive-In pulled their accounts from the station in response to it. The count was up to ten lost accounts by the next day following a wholly unrepentant broadcast on June 4 when Rob and Arnie attempted to defend [...]
[...] advertising from the KRXQ radio station. Wells Fargo, Nissan, and AT&T soon followed. Also in support of transgendered people are Chipotle, Snapple, Sonic, and on June 5, [...]
[...] The statement comes after a week of turmoil for the radio station. On June 1, GLAAD issued a Call to Action that mobilized hundreds of people to contact the radion station and voice their concerns. You can read more about that here and here. [...]
[...] violence towards transgendered kids, McDonald’s was among the companies that quickly pulled their advertising from the station. Furthermore, the chain received a respectable 85 out of a possible 100 points [...]