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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.
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
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.
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.
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.