Several national advertisers, including some Wisconsin companies, have pulled their commercials from the broadcast of the Glenn Beck Program on the Fox News Channel after Beck called President Barack Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people."

Beck made the comments during a July 28 television broadcast discussion about the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Beck's statements prompted Bill Shine, Fox News senior vice president of programming, to issue a statement distancing the network from Beck's comments, saying that Beck "expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel."

Several advertisers then removed their commercials from the show, including Geico (owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway), Procter & Gamble Co. and Progressive Insurance.

Racine-based S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. also was among the companies that said their ad placements during the broadcast were made in error and that they would correct the mistake, according to Nielsen Business Media.

In addition, Plymouth, Wis.-based Sargento Foods Inc., a privately held company, pulled its ads from Beck's show.

Barbara Gannon, spokeswoman for Sargento, told BizTimes today, "I can confirm that we have instructed our media buyer not to buy any advertising that would appear during the Glenn Beck Show. We market our products to people regardless of their political affiliations, yet we do not want to be associated with hateful speech used by either liberal or conservative television hosts."

The controversy drew additional attention when Donny Deutsch, a CNBC TV personality and head of the ad agency Deutsch Inc., called for a boycott of Beck's show, saying on the air that "this has to stop" and the "only way this stops" is if sponsors pull their support.

The liberal group "Color of Change" also urged a boycott of companies supporting Beck's show. A message on the organization's Web site states: "Beck is on campaign to convince the American public that President Obama's agenda is about serving the needs of Black communities at White people's expense. It's repulsive, divisive and shouldn't be on the air."

For advertisers, "The halo of the show means you are connected with supporting that point of view," John Greening, a Northwestern University professor of marketing who spent 28 years in the ad agency business, told MarketWatch.com. "It is not about awareness but about association. Beck's demagoguery crossed the line of the socially-expected taste level, and I can't think of a company on the planet who wants to be a part of that conversation. It is a no-brainer to pull your ads."