Insurance company Pacific Life announced Friday that it is pulling its advertisements from Fox News' “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after the host said the “immigration crisis” in America makes the country “poorer and dirtier and more divided.” 
 
 The action came after an advertisement from the company was shown on-screen right after Carlson made the comment on his opening monologue. 
 
 The ad promoted the company as having been “protecting generations of families for 150 years.” 
 
 The company quickly received backlash on social media calling for it to distance itself from Carlson’s program. 
 
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 Pacific Life said it would pull all ads from the show "in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program,” according to a statement posted to Twitter. 
 
 “One of our ads appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show last night following a segment where Mr. Carlson made a number of statements regarding immigration,” the company said. 
 
 “As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson’s statements. Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in,” the statement also read. 
 
 "We will not be advertising on Mr. Carlson's show in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program." 
 
 A message from Pacific Life: pic.twitter.com/bDq9hzia53 — Pacific Life (@pacificlife) December 14, 2018 
 
 A Fox News spokesperson in a statement shared with The Hill called controversy over Carlson's comments "unfortunate and unnecessary distractions." 
 
 "It is a shame that left wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed 'media watchdogs' weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech. We continue to stand by and work with our advertisers through these unfortunate and unnecessary distractions," the statement said. 
 
 Updated at 5:45 p.m. ||||| The anchor has hosted the No. 1 show in cable news for 15 consecutive years. 
 
 Weeks after revelations surfaced that Bill O’Reilly quietly settled several sexual harassment claims — leading to an advertiser exodus from his Fox News program — the embattled host is out of a job. The announcement came from parent 21st Century Fox. 
 
 “After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel," a statement read. 
 
 "Over the past 20 years at Fox News, I have been extremely proud to launch and lead one of the most successful news programs in history, which has consistently informed and entertained millions of Americans and significantly contributed to building Fox into the dominant news network in television," O'Reilly said in a statement sent by consultant Mark Fabiani. 
 
 The Fox anchor added: "It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims. But that is the unfortunate reality many of us in the public eye must live with today. I will always look back on my time at Fox with great pride in the unprecedented success we achieved and with my deepest gratitude to all my dedicated viewers. I wish only the best for Fox News Channel." 
 
 The news is not a complete surprise, but it is nonetheless stunning. O’Reilly, 67, has been hosting the network’s 8 p.m. program The O’Reilly Factor for two decades. And it has been the No. 1 show in cable news for 15 consecutive years, bringing in more than $400 million in ad revenue in 2014 and 2015, and $118 million in the first three quarters of 2016, according to Kantar Media. 
 
 And in recent years, O’Reilly has branched out with a series of best-selling books and spinoff TV movies on National Geographic Channel (majority owned by 21st Century Fox) that have strengthened his brand outside of Fox News, where he earns about $18 million annually. 
 
 By the time O’Reilly signed off on April 11 for a pre-planned two-week vacation, the advertiser exodus — including blue-chip brands Mercedes-Benz, Allstate, BMW, Bayer and Lexus — had reached more than 50, with most buyers reallocating their ad dollars to other Fox News programs. There was also mounting external pressure from advocacy and women’s groups, including Color of Change and the National Organization for Women, who were calling on the network to fire O'Reilly, and on advertisers to abandon his program. 
 
 But many media insiders predicted O’Reilly would survive because of his towering presence as the face of Fox News and also because the company recently renewed his deal — which was set to expire later this year — while it was aware that revelations of the settlement payment were going to be disclosed by The New York Times. 
 
 “He’s too important to the bottom line,” said one rival TV news executives prior to today’s announcement. “In some ways he’s more important to them now than [Roger] Ailes was.” 
 
 Former Fox News Channel chairman and CEO Ailes was ousted last summer, two weeks after former anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment, which led to a cascade of similar allegations and an investigation by the Manhattan law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. The same law firm was retained to investigate claims made against O'Reilly by former on-air contributor Wendy Walsh. Megyn Kelly was among more than a dozen women who came forward with allegations against Ailes, which she detailed in her memoir, Settle for More. 
 
 Both Ailes and O’Reilly have denied the allegations. But a deepening toxicity between Kelly and O’Reilly, Kelly’s former lead-in on Fox News, was among the many reasons Kelly decided to forgo a $100 million offer from 21st Century Fox to stay at the network and instead left for a deal with NBC News. She was said to be especially annoyed that O’Reilly publicly accused her of disloyalty for speaking out about Ailes. And in an interview on CBS This Morning in November, Kelly responded to O’Reilly’s criticism by noting: “I believe Roger Ailes made the company look bad.” 
 
 After Kelly left in January, Fox News moved quickly to put Tucker Carlson’s program into her 9 p.m. time slot. All of cable news has been lifted by the unpredictable opening months of President Donald Trump's administration, but Carlson has had an impressive early run — for the first three months of the year, Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.27 million viewers. 
 
 It was the second-most-watched show in cable news for the quarter, behind only The O’Reilly Factor, which had its best quarter ever, with 3.98 million viewers. But now, Fox News is without its primetime linchpin. And it’s unclear if a second transition will be as seamless. 
 
 The internal memo sent Wednesday signed by the Murdochs is below. ||||| Laura Ingraham is taking a vacation next week. Now the question is whether a controversy swirling around the host will go on hiatus as well. 
 
 The popular Fox News Channel host — her “Ingraham Angle” was the fourth most-watched cable-news program in February — told viewers Friday night she would not appear on air next week as she took what she described as a pre-planned break around the Easter holiday with her children. Substitute hosts are expected to fill in for her on the program. 
 
 She leaves in the midst of heightened scrutiny. Ingraham set off an imbroglio Wednesday with a Twitter post mocking Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, one of the students who has spoken out about gun control prominently since a Feb. 14th shooting incident at the Parkland, Fla. school left 17 people dead. Her tweet linked to a report noting Hogg had been rejected from four California colleges, and also said Hogg “whines about” the rejections. In response, Hogg posted on social media a list of recent advertisers in her program culled from Media Matters, a left-leaning watchdog group, and urged followers to pressure them to remove their commercials from Ingraham’s show. Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, TripAdvisor, Nutrish, Expedia and Hulu — a video-streaming company partly owned by Fox News parent 21st Century Fox — are among the advertisers who have said they would no longer advertise in her program. 
 
 Ingraham apologized Thursday via Twitter, noting that she was sorry “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.” She invited Hogg to appear on her program, but he said he would not accept her apology. 
 
 Many advertisers appeared to keep their distance from the program on Friday. The only blue-chip advertiser to appear over the course of the hour-long broadcast was IBM. A spokesman for the company said Saturday that the company was no longer advertising on Ingraham’s program. 
 
 Otherwise, many of Friday’s sponsors were direct-response advertisers like MyPillow.com, or lesser-known entities such as the American Petroleum Institute, Interstate Batteries and KT Tape. Fox News also filled commercial breaks with promos for hosts like Bret Baier, or the mid-morning team of Bill Hemmer and Sandra Smith. 
 
 Her Friday announcement drew eerie parallels to another Fox News host who came under the microscope. Last April, Bill O’Reilly announced a pre-planned vacation just before Easter weekend in the midst of an even greater controversy. Advertisers were moving commercials elsewhere on the network after a New York Times report detailed accusations of sexual harassment levied against the host who was at the time the linchpin of the Fox News primetime lineup. He never returned to the air, fired eight days later in a letter signed by the three members of the Murdoch family most active in running Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox: Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch. 
 
 There is no indication at this point that Fox News executives want Ingraham to remain off air. Her program has fit seamlessly into a primetime lineup that was re-calibrated last fall, and is now flanked with programming anchored by two other female hosts, Martha MacCallum and Shannon Bream. Ingraham, a longtime contributor to the network, built up her own audience base with her long-running radio program. 
 
 Fox News is working with advertisers, says a person familiar with the network’s ad sales strategy, accommodating sponsors who wish to move commercials elsewhere, but also maintaining a long-term view about the program and its connection with Madison Avenue. In February, “The Ingraham Angle” drew an average of more than 2.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Only Fox News’ “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” attracted more viewers that month. With that size of an audience and following — Ingraham is also a longtime radio host — advertisers could find her program difficult to ignore in the future. 
 
 Ingraham has not addressed the social-media controversy on air, and avoided the topic on Friday night’s program. The broadcast was billed as a “special,” and Ingraham devoted the episode to segments that examined “culture wars in the age of Trump.” Her return to the Fox News lineup will determine if she’s caught in one of her own. 
 
 [Updated, 5:50 PM PT, 3/31]
– Comments about immigrants that Tucker Carlson made on his Fox News show Thursday have just caused a major advertiser to give pause. The Hill reports that insurance company Pacific Life is, at least for "the coming weeks," yanking its ads from Tucker Carlson Tonight as it "[reevaluates] our relationship with his program," per a statement posted on Twitter. What Carlson said that prompted Pacific Life's retreat: Per HuffPost, the Fox host was taking issue with "previous" US leaders who insisted that Americans "shut up and accept" immigrants. Then, in a continued mocking of those previous leaders, Carlson went on to say that "we have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier and more divided." Pacific Life's ad aired immediately after the opening segment in which Carlson made those remarks. "As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements," Pacific Life says. "Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in." In its own statement to the Hill, Fox News lamented the "unfortunate and unnecessary distractions" it says were spurred by "left wing advocacy groups [that] under the guise of being supposed 'media watchdogs' weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech." Newsweek notes that, before this incident, Carlson has never been boycotted by advertisers, though other Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Bill O'Reilly (who's no longer with the network) have.