MyPillow, the direct-response sleep-support company led by entrepreneur Mike Lindell, has made a new bed for itself on Fox News Channel.
A national commercial for MyPillow was spotted on Fox News Thursday, roughly two months after the company disclosed that it had sought to pull all of its advertising from schedules on the Fox Corp.-backed cable-news outlet. The spot featured the founder and displayed a promo code for a package that contained five pillows that feature images from Bible stories, as well as a memoir — an offer he said was worth more than $200.
Both Fox and Lindell have reasons to get back together. MyPillow ads have supported much of Fox News Channel’s programming for years, including the network’s 8 p.m. hour hosted by Tucker Carlson, which has proven too contentious for some mainstream advertisers. Meanwhile, running ads on Fox News has lent MyPillow a degree of name recognition it may not have garnered elsewhere. A Fox News spokesperson was not able to offer immediate comment.
The two split in July after Fox News rebuked a proposed MyPillow ad that promoted baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Lindell told The Wall Street Journal last week he expected to resume advertising on the network soon.
Lindell had told The Wall Street Journal that he wanted Fox News to run a commercial calling attention to a new “cyber symposium” that he intended to stream in August which he asserted would prove that former President Donald Trump did win the 2020 election. Those claims have been rejected by dozens of courts in the months since Election Day last November.
But Fox News has come under scrutiny for airing claims about voting fraud during the election. Both Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, two voting technology companies, have filed mammoth defamation lawsuits against the Fox Corp. unit, alleging it made false claims about their influence on the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion in its suit, while Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6 billon. Fox News has sought to have both matters dismissed.
TV networks typically have a set of standards and practices to which commercials must adhere, and it is not unusual for a network to turn down an advertisement that makes claims about a rival product without presenting evidence, or spots that may be deemed offensive by viewers. NBCUniversal in 2018 said it would pull a commercial from the Trump campaign that ran during “Sunday Night Football” after it drew massive backlash on social media. The spot played up the purported threat of foreign migrants entering the United States.
The new MyPillow ads try only to sell pillows, not conspiracy theories — though Lindell does make reference to how he and his company have affected by “cancel culture,” without elaborating further.