Cartoon Network boss quits over bomb scare

CNN ^ | 02/09/2007

[devane617]

The head of Cartoon Network resigned Friday after the network's guerilla marketing scheme for one of its shows went bad last week and led to a bomb scare in Boston - a fiasco that cost its parent company $2 million. In a letter to employees, Jim Samples, the general manager and executive vice president of the network, wrote: "I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign. As general manager of Cartoon Network, I feel compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch."

[RobRoy]

>>In the meantime, the 2 dolts in Boston are still collecting checks and laughing at the mess they caused<<

They made Boston look like a town of idiots. Let the chips fall where they may - and it looks like they are. ;)

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

WTH is "guerilla marketing"?

[LurkedLongEnough]

Click here http://www.google.com

In the search box, type "guerilla marketing" and you will get your answers.

[Bon mots]

Well that's dumb. That was just a Dumbocrat enclave (Beantown) out to mug a company for money with a flimsy excuse. Cartoon Network ran the same promotion in a bunch of other cities and nobody saw the revenue opp., until after Boston decided to sue.

[Phantom Lord]

If I had been the head of Cartoon Network I would have held a major press conference as soon as Boston went nuts.

I would have gone on the air and said the following...

To the people of Boston, You are morons. Complete and total morons. Those signs are up in 9 other major cities, and have been up in your city for 3 weeks now.

You just noticed them now? Great preparedness. And no other city has reacted like you. They see that these signs are no threat. But you, Boston, are morons.

[ninonitti]

advertising campaign that inconvenienced thousands of ordinary people seems right to me. Actually, I would feel better if he were going to jail, too.

Just a real quick note.......the massive over response of the state and local police are what caused the inconvience......just as seeing 4 or 5 "emergency" vehicles blocking intersections are a huge over reaction to a medical 911 call.

Can we lock up the dispatcher that sends off the call too?

[rbosque]

Maybe they'll change the "Adult Swim". A bit too raunchy and stupid.

[Psycho_Bunny]

You'd think that, if anyone were resigning, it'd been some of the morons and twits running Boston.

[ninonitti]

If I had been the head of Cartoon Network I would have held a major press conference as soon as Boston went nuts

This may be the reason he's leaving.......I know I couldn't work for a group of sackless suits upstairs who bend over for a shakedown and reach for the checkbook instead of standing up for their people.

[Continental Soldier]

No, we can't lock up the dispatcher too. If a citizen reports a strange electronic device placed at the city's infrastructure (or anywhere, for that matter), the police and homeland security have an OBLIGATION to address the problem. To have done otherwise would have been a serious neglect of duty. A couple of years ago, I was having lunch at a sidewalk restaurant on Newburry Street when the police pulled up and cordoned off the street and sidewalk in front of the restaurant. They quickly proceeded to clear all of us out of the restaurant while they brought in the bomb squad to check on a suspicious vehicle parked in front of that restaurant, a vehicle with a large, unlabelled black box sitting on the back seat. It was an out-of-state license plate and it had been overparked there for several hours. Fortunately, the box was identified as harmless, and the police returned the area to normal. Not one of us at the restaurant or on the sidewalk complained about the police response, even though, in my case, the affair screwed me out of my dessert! :)

[ninonitti]

I was pointing out to you how your reaction to this was to throw someone in jail to make you feel better over this entire incident.

In this case it was an MBTA worker who was spooked by the cartoon sign and called it in and shortly thereafter another call came in about a pipe bomb at NEMC. Someone (my bet is at the BPD level) at that point freaked out and got into Massachusetts cop not on construction detail mode and started the dominoes falling all over.

As I've said earlier this was an over reaction and the inability of government officials to take responsibility for anything proves it in my book. This "Homeland Security Industry" is nothing but a smoke screen that bungling local bureaucrats hide behind while murders go unsolved; cops smuggle dope into town; the borders are open and blinking lights send them out shutting down interstates.