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Cartoon Network CEO Resigns Over Aqua Teen Scare
DesertBlade writes "Jim Samples, CEO of Cartoon Network, has resigned over the bomb scare prompted by the Aqua Teen marketing campaign. Turner (CN's parent company) ended up paying over 2 million in restitution to the city of Boston, and a man with a thirteen year record at the company has lost his job. Though many people have been citing this as 'the ultimate successful advertising campaign', there have obviously been real consequences from the incident." By virtue of the consequences of the campaign, was this now officially a bad idea? Or is your opinion that this is all far too much knee-jerking? Have your say in the comments.
More specifically: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/pipe _bombs_foun.html and http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/nont errorist_em.html
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"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
On top of this, Forbes is reporting that this whole sorry episode didn't even help raise the number of people who watch the show. The good news is that the ratings haven't gone down either.
I came here for a good argument
Sure overreaction is fine in certain situations and to a certain extent, but the GP is right, the Boston officials were just being plain stupid...
Har?
Actually, the problem wasn't that the ceiling tiles were glued to the ceiling. The problem was that they were glued badly. The concept was perfectly safe and reasonable, and is a commonly-used construction technique. They just fucked it up.
There were huge criminial-negligence-caliber mistakes made. But the simple fact that they decided to glue ceiling tiles to the ceiling wasn't one of them.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Fear not. Dr Kool, PhD, is one of the funniest people on Slashdot. I say that thinking particularly of this recent masterpiece.
Ok, I'll bite.
For the nth time, the campaign that you refer to was:
A. Based solely around the image of white woman dominating a black woman. B. Built around the message "white is right" C. Made and presented in the racially-hypersensitive United States of America. D. None of the above.
If you knew how to use the Google you would've discovered the answer is D.
As this Joystiq post illustrates, there were several images in the ad series in addition to the incindiary one of the white female grabbing the black one. For those new to the situation, each woman represents a color of the Sony Playstation Portable, that ad series was meant to announce the release of a white PSP. For bonus points, where was the billboard series actually presented? Amsterdam. Not the United States.
Sony's ad agency had to know the outrage it would create if the ads were released here where the first thought is always race. The purpose of the ads was anthropomorphizing something mundane and aesthetic. To spice things up they made the young hot models show aggression. Rather than a bumble it would appear the ad agency knew exactly who they were marketing to.
The agency major miscalculation came in forgetting about the internet. Obviously someone was going to take pictures of these and send them around the world the moment the dropped. Apparently they figured the drawbacks didn't outweigh the potential gains. Given the controversy in combination with Sony's reverend blunder factory, I think they would've been better off without.
Getting back on topic, I agree with your sentiment that this furor over something completely innocent (middle finger pixels aside) is ridiculous. Even if Sony never said "white is right."
First a thank you to all the slashdotters who have unilaterally decided that citizens of my city are gun slinging luddites... Hopefully I can provide a little more of a first-hand analysis.
While there is no question that the reaction of the BPD was an overreaction, there is no question that the actions of Cartoon Network and Interference were totally unacceptable. The first "device" that was found was placed at a critical intersection of the major North-South Interstate highway that feeds the city, a major subway train line, and the commuter rail that services all communities north of the city. Further, it was adjacent to (a few feet away from) the main fiber optic right-of-way between the city and northern communities (a fact that was missed by media - surprise, surprise). Finally, despite the fact that many try to blame this on post-9/11 hysterics, a group of anti-Semites attempted to blow up this same bridge/highway on 4/20/01 (Hitler's birthday - classy) so forgive us for our post 4/20 paranoia.
An explosive device - even one with a limited payload - if successfully detonated would have impacted the ability for more than a half million people to travel to or from and communicate with the metro area. Further, the other devices were placed on every single bridge that allows people to travel out of or into the City of Boston from/to the North.
Finally, the foolish duo that installed these devices were filmed an hour into the incident watching the BPD and bomb squad in their investigation and decided to remain silent for several hours, allowing the situation to continue to snowball out of control.
There is plenty of blame to share here amongst all of the actors involved. It is tempting to blame "the man" for overreacting, but the reality is there is no one that should escape criticism. It is not ever - no - not ever - acceptable for a marketing campaign to be based on the illegal placement of advertisements on publicly owned infrastructure, especially not on critical pathways into and out of a major metro area.
Source: I was there (if only my personal experience could be validated in a wikipedia entry...)
They should be procescuted to the fullest extent of the law.
For graffiti.
What you call a "tubular bundle" most people call a battery. And contrary to what you may think, it is not uncommon to find wires and even electronics attached to such an object.
Ok, so it was wrapped in plastic so they couldn't see the Duracell logos maybe, but what did they think was powering the lights then? High explosives don't power lights, batteries do. Think.
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The problem with the falling ceiling tile was not the city's fault, it was the fault of the contractors installing them and the engineer who designed them. As designed, they were structurally sound, the problem was they used epoxied anchors (which are perfectly safe) but the contractors did not have the proper tools or training to install them, because they require very precisely drilled holes, that are very clean, to adhere properly. The failure on the engineers part, was to specify those anchors in such a critical location and not specify stringent testing, as well as personally verifying the testing had in fact been done. The engineering firm responsible for that portion was a well known and respected firm (well as respected as any firm that wins government contracts in Boston can be) and the city had no reason not to be confident that they would perform to expectations. One major problem, and flaw in the design, was that it could give no warning signs if there was a problem (for example, deformation an inspector could notice). The anchors were either working perfectly or not at all, with no easy visual way to tell.
To call a modern and widely used epoxy concrete anchor "glue" is to deliberately misrepresent the facts to make the administration sound incompetent, when in fact the blame rests solely on the engineer responsible for the design, his immediate superiors whose job it is to review the design, and the contractors who could not be bothered to read and follow the directions for the anchors. To blame the city of Boston for this is kind of like buying a new house, only to have it collapse on you, and instead of blaming the people who built it, blaming the realtor who sold it to you.
It was Cartoon Network, not Comedy Central.
splunge (n) -- A good idea.. but it could be lousy... and I'm not being indecisive!
Even better, as posted in the other reply: the sign in broad daylight in context of where it was hung
Please, for the love of all that is sane and logical, admit that this looks nothing like a random collection of LEDs, no matter who you are.
Your completely logical argument only applies here if you make the assumption this situation was "similarly ridiculous [sic]"
The only debate here is whether or not these devices could or should have been mistaken for bombs. The first device reported to the police was found on a support beam for a major highway bridge in a spot practically no one would ever see it - perfect spot for a bomb, not so perfect spot for an advertisement.
However, while I can understand treating that discovery a little more cautiously, that was at 8:18AM. The city government (along with the feds) disrupted the city for another 12 hours after. I don't think the city overreacted on that first one. I'm not so sure I want to take the side that the city didn't overreact for the rest of the day.
And I certainly don't want to take the side that "you can distribute crudely constructed electrical devices throughout a city and be free of responsibility for it." You can't yell fire in a theatre when it's not, no matter how much you believe in the first amendment. By the same argument, you can't haphazardly make it look like the theatre is on fire when it's not, either.