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.

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[agent dero]

Sorry, but your post mentioned the buck at the top of the list and September 11th, and I can't help but draw any subtle lines between the head of the corp and the head of the state...

Anyways, I'm glad he took the fall for it, as he most likely has savings as opposed to the young guys who actually put up signs. Another sacrifice is made to the new State of paranoia.

Very disappointing overreaction

[vanyel]

Not only Boston overreacting, but now the network itself? Where are the people willing to stand up for sanity? It's truly a sad day...

Booooo!

[k1e0x]

Cartoon Network stand up to the stupid city of Boston! They are at fault.

Public & Network's joined fault!

[JAB Creations]

It's everyone's fault really. The media and government hype terrorism for certain political forces to establish a "comfort zone" in the middle east by trying to scare the crap out of Americans. Then the same people who own the media companies are trying anything to make money like any other big businesses and it's no secret that bad publicity is somehow good publicity because people are still talking about it versus not.

Boston's Response

[Anonymous Coward]

If Boston doesn't freak out at least a little bit, what keeps other companies from launching the same types of campaigns at taxpayer expense?

The question asked is whether Turner / etc. got what they deserved -- which they did. The only other thing would be to slap some sense or respect into those two mental children who hung the signs and then made the absurd comments about hair. Hope the one kid is laughing as he is deported.

Yet we are still talking about "Boston's Response"...

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[MrNaz]

That's a rather benign interpretation. Add a dash of cynicism, a sprinkling of conspiracy theroism and a few tinfoil hats as a garnish and you could easily conclude that the excessive terrorism threats are a way to scare populations into submitting to government control. I think High Chancellor Suttler said it best in the movie V for Vendetta:

"What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television. This message must resound throughout the entire Interlink. I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want everyone to remember why they need us!"

Everyone should see that movie, and then take a good, hard look around them.

Re:Stop Spreading Terror!

[faronem]

I posted a similar reply to a different post earlier, but the difference is in Boston a few of the the second round of the litebrites were put on critical infrastructure--including *underneath* both the BU and Longfellow bridges (the latter of which turned out to be something coincidentally reported and not related to ATHF) and more seriously at the bus stop at the Sullivan Square T station 20ft up on the the main pillar supporting the elevated I-93 right above it...an obvious target if you wanted to kill people stuck in traffic and cause major transportation disruption.

I'm reasonably sure NYPD would have freaked out if one was reported as an unknown electronic device on the (distinctly longer) GW or Brooklyn bridges. None in NYC were in subway stations or critical infra--the most concerning was on a highway onramp.

And, most importantly, LEDs are freaking scary! Boo!

He should not have resigned

[arthurpaliden]

He should not have resigned. He should have taken those responsible for this gross overreaction to task by produced a show about how stupid the response was. Using industry/military experts in bomb making, demolition, target selection and mission execution.

And it goes with out saying that he would not use the talking head pseudo terrorist experts, read political appointees, that spouted as fact that is possible to successfully get the components of on and to mix binary explosives on a moving plane loaded with real people and a flight crew who would notice that one washroom was never available not to mention the thermos cases the components would have to be brought on the plane in.

www.thebostonbomb.com

Re:Stop Spreading Terror!

[low-k]

Part of the problem is that the marketing company's lite-brite boxes were unprofessionally made. There are wires and batteries hanging out the side; it has that look and feel of "bombs" you see in movies (like the ones with the stupid "I'll let you know when I'm going to blow up" 7-segment LED display countdown)... and if bombs look like that in movies, then they *must* look like that in real life, right? If they had just made their little LED boxes to have the same size, shape, color, etc. of the other normal traffic signs/signals, that is do a professional job, then at worst people would have just thought that someone had hacked an existing sign (it's not like most people can precisely remember the exact number of signs/signals at every bridge, overpass, etc. they drive past on the way to work).

Those signs totally look like some crap that some middle schoolers would throw together at the last minute for a "science" project (no offense intended to you middle schoolers out there who read /.; I should perhaps have said average or typical middle schoolers).

Bomb Stops At The Top

[Anonymous Coward]

"While I might expect a bomb to be disguised, I certainly wouldn't expect it be disguised as a cartoon figure that will DRAW attention."

I would, then I could remote-detonate it. Taking out what really matters. No, not the civilians.

BTW with this mans act, I guess slashdot is going to have to revise it's cynical attitude towards business.

CEO?

[JustinKSU]

FTA:

In a letter to employees, Jim Samples, the general manager and executive vice president of the network, wrote: "I deeply regret...

I'm not sure where CEO came from. GM/VP is a different job.

Re:I agree

[killjoe]

I for one find it highly disturbing that the things were in place for days before the were "discovered". If it had been a real bomb they would have gone off without anybody noticing.

Re:It happened because it's Boston

[Miseph]

As much as I hate Boston, they don't deserve full credit for the epic level of pork-barreling that went on with the bog Dig. That went through all sorts of state and Federal politics as well. It's also not fair to call them 'incompetent", most of them are very competent, very intelligent people who get a lot done... the problem is that their job isn't to responsibly run the city of Boston, it's to make themselves as wealthy as possible in the shortest amount of time, at taxpayer expense if at all possible. That said, you forgot to mention a couple of other events in Boston's "illustrious" history. First, there's Shay's Rebellion, a local uprising from my neck of the woods (Pittsfield-Amherst-Springfield area) that many historians cite as one of the major motives behind the U.S. Constitution (prior to that, the same function was served by the Articles of Confederacy); a bunch of Revolutionary War veterans and farmers armed themselves and captured an armory in an attempt to overthrow the government, before being slaughtered by mercenaries hired by the Boston plutocrats who were simultaneously collecting exorbitant rent and arbitrarily raising taxes in order to pay themselves higher salaries. They were, in effect, running half of the Commonwealth's area as an enormous sharecropping plantation, raping Western Massachusetts for all it was worth in order to keep Boston, where they all spent most of their time, well funded and to expand the industrial efforts that were beginning in the Central and Northeastern parts of the state (Worcester-Lowell). You also forgot to mention the Quabbin Reservoir: four small towns in the Swift River Valley were forcibly depopulated, the people who lived there paid a fraction of the value of their land and left to find new homes, and then the valley was flooded and a subterranean aqueduct nearly 25 miles long was dug just to bring water to the SECOND largest reservoir in the Commonwealth. The homes and livelihoods of the people living in the area were deemed to be worth less than providing Boston, which had long ago completely depleted its own natural resources, with more water to waste. Oh, and boy am I glad that my taxes mostly go to funding unnecessary local projects in Boston, despite that I don't spend any time there, I live closer to the capitals of two other states, and the towns around here are all starved for funding because well over half of all available state aid goes to just one Metropolitan area. People wonder why I get angry when I tell them I live in Massachusetts, and they ask "near Boston?"

Re:Which one? Bizarro World? :]

[rta]

I think you might be too harsh on the bomb squad here. While i don't have an attribution, one of the articles in the middle of that day on cnn had a quote from a random citizen who said something like "Well, earlier I saw on TV a bomb squad guy holding it in his bare hands and just walking along with [the device] so I knew it couldn't be TOO bad ".

What the actual bomb squad guys thought / knew and what the managers and politicians decided to do with the information, those are different things.

Re:Stop Spreading Terror!

[psykocrime]

We're scared of each other, of the government, and of some vague group on the other side of the world, who don't have the means to stage a traditional war, or even a single battle.

Nah, I'm pretty much just scared of our government. It represents far more of a threat to my safety and well-being than any Al-Qaeda terrorist.

Re:Which one? Bizarro World? :]

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of my time spent in Iraq in 2005. So you drive out in humvees, leaving the relative safety of a base surrounded by perimiter guards that only gets rocket and mortar attacks a few times a week. There you are, just 3-4 gun trucks, 9-15 guys, practically alone in the Sunni Triangle. You pass by blown up guard rails, craters in the side of the road 4-5 feet across, remnants of car bombs.

Yet, even then, after many explosions targeting us, when we saw a pile of rocks on the side of the road, we'd still have the sense to know it was just a pile of rocks. Hell, we'd go kick it and see. EOD took time to respond. And they're needed at real bomb sites, not the fake or imagined ones.

Our platoon had a nearly 100% rate of not calling out EOD for non-bombs. And the only bomb training we got before hand was the old plastic utensil land mine detector course.

This shit in Boston is just crazy. My security image below is 'stoned', exactly what the Boston officials must be. Or maybe they /should/ be.

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[Taevin]

That's the part about this that pisses me off the most. Okay, sure, the Lite-Brights are out of the ordinary (at least for being hung up about the city). I can even see how such a device could be seen as a threat to some self important official with a stick up his ass, and would not entirely blame them for doing something about it. The fact that they went completely over the top with this and started trying to prosecute people is not understandable. Why is it so hard for them to admit they were wrong? If they had just said "Oops, yeah, these things are pretty harmless. We apologize for the scare." there would be no problems and no media circus.

I don't quite remember where they were all placed but even if they were placed around an airport, I still personally think it's an overreaction simply on technical grounds. Given the size of the devices, they would have to be attached to a plane or be within several dozen feet to cause any noteworthy damage, even if they were pure C4. Since none of them were placed on airport grounds, they posed absolutely no threat to aircraft.

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[anagama]

Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause burns.
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause an earthquake in Uganda.
A. No.
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will get taken down and a fine sent to the party who put it up w/o permission?
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will cause an entire city to "duck and cover".
A. No

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall Cartoon Network was forced to pay damages for someone else's overreaction. Their rights weren't taken away, per se. They just were threatened with a criminal trial over someone else's overreaction, someone who, by his job description, is part of the system that prosecutes them. Now, I see that the prosecuters would rather sue someone then admit they are wrong. How long before they sue you to protect "national security" or in the interest of "fighting terrorism"? No time at ALL! They are abusing the implicit trust they receive as part of their job description, that they will not put their personal interest over the performance of their duties. If they had just removed the devices, and told Cartoon Network not to do this shit again, there wouldn't be much of a story. However, CN risked getting sued... for failing to differentiate themselves enough from terrorist activities, despite the fact, that a successful terrorist imitates legitimate activities in order to succeed as a terrorist.
And only the legal system's lack of perception allowed the confusion to stand.

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[illegalcortex]

Otherwise it just looks like a panel of randomly placed LEDs

You have got to be joking [msn.com]. No? [www.cbc.ca] Wow. [alaskareport.com]

Re:I agree

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, given that they had already found two fake pipe bombs, which no one here on Slashdot seems to know about (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.b g?articleid=180349), the paranoia of the Boston authorities seems more understandable. It's also a really good idea sometimes to give your staff practice treating a small emergency as a real one, so that when they have the real one they're familiar with the procedures.

I'd much rather the Boston police take it seriously, and be wrong, than take it casually and be wrong.

Re:Buck Stops At The Top

[vux984]

It only looks like an LED cartoon character if you're actually familiar with the character.

I'd say it would be pretty familiar to anyone who'd ever played "space invaders" too. (ie pretty much anyone under 40.)

Otherwise it just looks like a panel of randomly placed LEDs.

If by "random" you mean "a clear image of something giving you the finger" I suppose so. ;)

I believe the people who mistakenly thought it could be a bomb did so with the most earnest of intentions.

True but we don't really have much use for people who report things that aren't bombs. How many innocent cardboard boxes, guitar cases, gymbags, abandoned Dells, old speakers, and other nondescript "potentially suspicious looking" debris is lying around Boston? They could shut the city down for an entire decade with earnest intentions.

People should know better. When I see a plane flying low I still assume its landing, not attacking the city...

I can understand how this got out of hand but it'll happen again. Around here Telus is putting up pink flamingos all around the city as part of its latest campaign... they're hollow and in public places and they weren't there yesterday... could be a bomb in there.

Seriously if the 'terrorists' were planting bombs everyone they'd make them look like run of the mill every day items like transformer boxes... hmm... wait... i saw a transformer box on one of the support columns in my parkade... i don't remember that being there before... excuse me...

Re:Comments from a bostonian...

[Pitr]

By that reasoning, any really good, well developed, high traffic position to place an add is a fantastic position to place an explosive device.

So the CN is responsible because there _could_ have been a bomb. This reminds me of the guy on the British subway who was gunned down because he _could_ have had a bomb, since his jacket was a little bulky, and he was running for the train. I'm believe both cases came about through fundamentally flawed reason and response, not to mention unreasonable levels of fear.

The reason this is all a HUGE problem, is that it sets a terrifying precedent for the way people think and act; Look over your shoulder all the time, and point the finger at anyone/thing that freaks you out. It can be summed up as, "Cry 'Wolf!' as often as possible.". This idea fundamentally opposes rational thought, and the very principles of "Innocent until proven guilty." are only a little further down this slippery slope.

This level of paranoia cannot be condoned as "reasonable" or "acceptable". It intrudes on the most basic principles of freedom and liberty. Or, to close with my favorite Ben Franklin quote:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Perfect, except for one thing.

[Presence1]

"Gee.. those lite brites look like a character from Aqua Teen Hunger Force (someone in the department must have known that) maby we should call up cartoon network to see if they know anything about this. *ring* *ring* Cartoon Network: Hello? Boston Police: Hi, this is the Boston Police did you put up lite brites around out city? Cartoon Network: Yes we did.. its a part of our advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Boston Police: Oh ok, we were just making sure they weren't bombs. Cartoon Network: No no.. nothing explosive about them. Boston Police: Thanks a lot, we didn't want to shutdown transportation all over the city over some stupid lite brites. Cartoon Network: Yeah, that would have made you look like dumb pieces of shit. Boston Police: Yes it would have."

The scenario you describe is perfect, EXCEPT for one thing. The marketing geniuses who put it up did not bother to include on the devices ANY kind of identifyng information. If they had, I would agree with you completely.

But, as it actually happened, what were the cops on the ground supposed to to with four 911 calls within an hour and finding 3 of these devices on the most strategically located bridges (and fiber-optic conduits) in Boston and the other near a hospital? Maybe the thing itself doesn't look like a bomb, but why couldn't it just be one component of a wireless trigger system?

Perhaps report back that "it might be suspicious, or it might look a bit like some character in some show my teenaager watched once, so you better send out the marketing analysis experts before we call the bomb squad.".

Remember this was a very low-res pixel graphic with no identifying info meant to be obscure for a targeted audience. It wasn't like it flashed letters for national brands like "Coke" or even a local one like "Joe's Pizza".

While I usually find myself very much on the anti-authority side of the argument, in this case, they were doing their jobs exactly right. Call the bemb experts, clear the area, let them figure out what it is, and call the "All Clear" when it is ok.

Re:Perfect, except for one thing.

[Presence1]

"oh come on... like NO ONE in the Boston Police has seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Remember.. these were in a few different cities and only Boston's Police department were dumb enough to confuse them for bombs."

I'm sure someone in the force probably had seen it, but the entire force didn't go out and inspect them - probably only four did. The entire force isn't in on that call, and they certinly don't have all the info at that minute.

Consider how it actually plays out. Several hours after a half-dozen people were arrested in London on a terrorist plot, they get a series of four 911 calls within an hour about devices on bridges and near a hospital. They send a few officers out to the site to see what is up. Now, the officers all call in that they see some device with LEDs, batteries, wires, and circuit boards. They don't take them down and inspect them in detail, both out of common sense (don't mess with stuff when you don't know what it is), and probably SOP to not screw up potential evidence, and to leave it for the specialists.

Now, given that situaion, as the officer on site, or the supervisor hearing all four reports confirmed, of unrecognized electronic devices placed in key strategic locations around the city, -- ARE YOU REALLY going to make the call that "nah, nevermind, it's just junk". You potentially only have minutes to react; you may already be too late. Think for a second how you'd be rightly pilloried if someting did blow up and you had called "nevermind". You do not have the luxury of time to figure out who might have put it up there and why, what product might be being marketed, verify their story, etc. -- you need to figure out NOW whether or not it is a threat.

The only thing to do is to send in an expert to find out WTF those things ACTUALLY are, even if they look like they could be innocuous. Even if one of the officers had recognized it as looking like some kind of marketing, what's to say that it isn't just a cover for a wireless relay/trigger for something further under the bridges?

Now, I'd say exactly exactly the opposite if they marketers had put ANY identifying marks on there. Just a tiny sticker with "Interference marketing / 123 main street/ anytown MA / 617-345-6789" would do.

With that, and 10 (hectic) minutes, the cops could verify that they were actually put there by a marketing firm, that it was a bona fide firm with a lease for X years, their clients were Turner, ABC, Etc., and that their clients could verify that they were who they said they were, etc. But, there was no such info to even start such an investigation, and no time to guess.

I also consider that these so-called marketers are supposed to be professionals at anticipating people's reactions to their actions. The entire purpose of the device is to generate a reaction. It seems that they could also have anticipated that security people would react to a set of *unknown* devices in key strategic locations as a threat, and done something simple to mitigate that, such as putting on a tag, or calling in a notice. But they didn't. If they had, and the cops ignored it, then, I'd be in the front of the line berating them for not doing their job, but in this case, they did the right thing.