More major companies pull ads from ‘The O’Reilly Factor’

Dozens of companies have announced that they are pulling their commercials from “The O’Reilly Factor” following reports that the the show’s host, Bill O’Reilly, paid $13 million in settlements to five women who accused him of sexual harassment. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 30 companies had made the call to pull their ads from the Fox prime-time cable program, according to a report by CNBC.

Jenny Craig, Subaru, Ancestry, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW of North America, Mitsubishi Motors, Lexus, Constant Contact, Bayer, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, Orkin, Untuckit, Allstate, Esurance, T. Rowe Price, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi and Credit Karma were among the companies, according to the report.

{mosads}O’Reilly, 67, did not address the report on his Monday night program, but in a statement over the weekend he said the settlements were made “to put to rest any controversies to spare my children.”

He has two teenage children.

“Just like other prominent and controversial people, I’m vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity,” the statement read. “In my more than 20 years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline.”

President Trump defended the Fox News host in an interview with The New York Times earlier Wednesday, calling him “a good person” who “shouldn’t have settled” in the lawsuits made against him.

Fox indicated in a statement on Tuesday that ads were being shifted to other programs on the network.