A growing advertiser boycott, two new legal actions — one for sexual harassment, one involving racist behaviour and comments — it’s all just another day in the increasingly grubby Fox News Channel. And the most powerful man on Fox, host Bill O’Reilly, is at the centre of the storm, along with management of the channel.

The boycott raises the question of how long the Murdochs will allow O’Reilly to remain as host of Fox News Channel’s most watched program, The O’Reilly Factor, as the list of advertisers deserting O’Reilly’s show builds. The growing boycott of O’Reilly (it is not clear if the various advertisers are also pulling their ad dollars from Fox News Channel, or just O’Reilly’s show) came as Fox was hit by a new sexual harassment legal action, and a second alleging racial harassment and discrimination.

The O’Reilly story is becoming a major headache for Fox News’ parent, 21st Century Fox (which is being investigated by US regulators over the lack of disclosure of these payments to shareholders) because when Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes was ousted last July after a flurry of sexual harassment allegations, 21st Century Fox said it had zero tolerance for any behaviour that “disrespects women or contributes to an uncomfortable work environment”. The company recently renewed O’Reilly’s contract and as The New York Times reported on the weekend, some of the payments to women who claimed they had been harassed by O’Reilly, have been made since Ailes’ exit. O’Reilly continues to deny the claims, but he has settled some of them, including the biggest: a US$9 million payment to one former Fox employee.

According to The Wall Street Journal at the weekend, Fox has just re-signed O’Reilly to a new contract. He was paid a reported US$18 million a year under his previous deal. His importance to Fox and the Murdoch family fortunes can be seen by how much advertising his show attracts. According to Kantar Media (a US analytics firm) The O’Reilly Factor, which was watched by 3.9 million people in the March quarter (the biggest cable news audience for 14 years), generated more than US$446 million (A$586 million) in advertising revenue from 2014 to the end of last year.

Advertisers who say they don’t (for the moment) want their ads exposed to such a large audience include the North American arms of Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai and Mitsubishi, insurer Allstate, the South Korean car-maker Hyundai, pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, giant financial services group T. Rowe Price, Sanofi the consumer healthcare products group, and a small US digital marketing company, Constant Contact.  — Glenn Dyer