Imus Slur: Advertisers Getting Skittish

“The Don Imus controversy may not end with his suspension,” Keith Olbermann reported tonight. It’s starting to hurt financially. Quoting Olbermann: “Staples — the big office supply chain — telling our sister network CNBC that ‘recent comments on the show’ have caused it to discontinue its advertising on Imus In The Morning.

And, an hour later, the co-president of Bigelow Tea announced her company, whose advertising contract with Imus’s show had just expired, had ‘suspended our current advertising’ and may not resume it.

Within the last hour, the nation’s biggest marketer, Procter & Gamble, has suspended its advertising committments for the television simulcast.

And the media buying agency Carat-USA says some of its clients have asked for their commercials to be pulled from the Imus program, though it would not identify them.”

Olbermann said management has suggested that he “withhold any formal comment” about the situation “until Mr. Imus meets with the Rutgers players, to gauge their reaction…”

> Related: Reuters quotes a person familiar with the situation: “It’s not been a mass defection and if they were concerned, their spots were moved to other programs. It has not resulted in a loss to MSNBC.”