Fox Calls Cops on Billboard Truck Urging Advertisers to ‘#DropFox’ Outside Upfront Presentations

AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File

While Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, held their upfront presentation Monday, anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project trolled the network with a billboard truck urging advertisers and viewers to “#DropFox.”

Upfronts have been held by television networks in May since the 1960s, to entice advertisers to buy commercial airtime “up front,” or several months in advance of the upcoming television season, and for the networks to promote their programming to the media.

These particular upfronts come at a critical time for Fox News, still reeling from the massive $787.5 million defamation settlement paid to Dominion Voting Systems and scrambling to reverse a ratings slump in the wake of the shocking ouster of host Tucker Carlson.

The Lincoln Project hired a billboard truck to park outside Fox’s New York City headquarters and show snippets from the network’s programs on a variety of topics, including the Covid-19 pandemic, former President Donald Trump, clips of Carlson railing about “wokeness,” and so on, along with a hashtag “#DROPFOX.”

Monday afternoon, an NYPD officer issued a ticket to the billboard truck and ordered it to move, a spokesperson for the Lincoln Project told Mediaite. The group claimed the officer told the driver that a “Fox exec” called to complain about the truck and ask it to be moved.

The Lincoln Project insisted that the driver was parked legally, but agreed to move the truck.

Rick Wilson, a Lincoln Project co-founder, posted several tweets attacking Fox as being “run by chickensh*ts who dish it out but can’t take it,” and said that the group was also running geotargeted digital ads aimed at the advertising executives and members of the media who were attending Fox’s upfront.

Reached by phone, Wilson said that the truck was moving to another location outside the Fox headquarters and continuing to run the Lincoln Project video.

Claire Atkin, co-founder of an organization that encourages advertising boycotts of Fox News and other right-wing media, posted a tweet mocking Fox for not wanting “clips of their own show[s] in front of their own advertising event.”

The Lincoln Project was not the only group targeting the Fox upfront. Axios senior media reporter and CNN analyst Sara Fischer tweeted a video showing protesters chanting “shame” and holding posters urging advertisers to not buy ads on Fox.

Mediaite reached out to Fox News for comment, but did not receive a response.

UPDATE 4:45 pm ET: Fox has its own trucks outside the upfront, promoting the network’s programs and ratings as higher than their competition at CNN and MSNBC. A spokesperson for Fox provided the below photos:

Photo provided by Fox News.

Photo provided by Fox News.

Photo provided by Fox News.

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