Is Procter & Gamble Unwittingly Funding Steve Bannon’s Podcast Through a Weather Station?

Kipp JonesSep 12th, 2022, 6:07 pm
 

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images/Twitter

A media watchdog group claims Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast is being inadvertently funded by Procter & Gamble’s vast advertising budget.

According to a report from the Check My Ads Institute, an adtech activist organization, the weather network’s WeatherNation shares an owner with the far-right platform Real America’s Voice.

Check My Ads also claims RAV and WeatherNation share an address in Colorado. RAV broadcasts War Room as well as internet show personalities like Charlie Kirk.

WeatherNation TV Inc. was acquired by Robert Sigg of Performance One Media sometime in 2014 or 2015, according to Check My Ads.

“WeatherNation, which is available for free on any connected TV, is a front for Steve Bannon,” the group claims.

Sigg founded Real America’s Voice in 2019. The Washington Post reported Sigg saw an opportunity to cash in on MAGA content and agreed to distribute Bannon’s podcast.

The Post reported RAV, like WeatherNation, is also headquartered near Colorado’s capital:

In a studio outside Denver, next door to a youth prison, 15 or 20 people put Real America’s Voice on air. Many are in their 20s or 30s and earn about $30,000 per year, said current and former employees.

Their boss is Sigg, 57, who presents himself as a highflying media executive.

Sigg’s WeatherNation was dropped by DirecTV in 2018, but remains available to stream for free via any number of apps. It also receives funding from traditional advertisers such as Procter & Gamble.

While the multinational company behind brands like Tide, Bounty, and Febreze does not advertise on Bannon’s broadcast, it does broadcast its products on WeatherNation.

Check My Ads noted Bannon’s salary from RAV is confidential and reported:

It’s not surprising that Bannon doesn’t want to talk specifics. That would mean giving up the big secret: WeatherNation and Real America’s Voice present themselves as separate companies in order to obtain ad revenues. Behind the scenes, they pool the revenues into a single production house.

In other words, there is fundamentally no difference between running ads on WeatherNation or Real America’s Voice. The outcome is the same.

The group claims Bannon, a pariah for advertisers not named Mike Lindell, has found a “workaround” through what is viewed as a “perfectly innocent weather channel.”

Ads that run on WeatherNation avoid violating P&G’s standards, but all the revenue allegedly goes into the same pot. The report claims:

Sigg has carefully designed his media empire to survive the ad industry’s brand safety demands using a simple workaround. The company has obtained advertising accounts under (at least) three separate businesses within the digital advertising supply chain…

They use these accounts interchangeably, as needed. If Real America’s Voice, LLC gets booted from an ad exchange’s inventory after getting called out by Check My Ads, they can continue to monetize the channels under the other two ad accounts.

WeatherNation — with its 24/7 weather coverage — is the linchpin in this operation, acting as a form [of] insurance for the company. Who would have a problem running ads on a weather forecast?

Check My Ads co-founder Nandini Jammi has been clear on Twitter her goal is to “demonetize” Bannon.

Neither Bannon nor RAV appear to have gone to any length to hide a relationship between them and WeatherNation, as is evident by this War Room segment from August of last year.

War Room

Read the Check My Ads Institute’s full report here.

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