Boston Cartoon bomb scare claims victim
Cartoon Network head Jim Samples has been forced to resign following a marketing stunt gone awry.
The head of the Cartoon Network resigned Friday following a marketing stunt that caused a security scare in Boston. The announcement about Jim Samples resigning was made in an internal memo sent to Cartoon Network staffers. In a statement to employees, Samples said he regrets the stir that the stunt caused. “It’s my hope that my decision allows us to put this chapter behind us and get back to our mission of delivering unrivaled original animated entertainment for consumers of all ages,” Samples said.
It’s official. The terrorists have won.
02/9/07 at 4:31 pm
Disgusting. Appalling.
02/9/07 at 4:41 pm
[…] As Heidi puts it, the terrorists have won. […]
02/9/07 at 4:46 pm
[…] THE BEAT » Blog Archive » Boston Cartoon bomb scare claims victim […]
02/9/07 at 5:18 pm
How ridiculous.
02/9/07 at 5:53 pm
Ugh. Poor fall guy. I hope he has a soft place to land.
02/9/07 at 6:09 pm
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but the city of Boston should be embarassed beyond belief. The fact their bomb squad couldn’t tell that a “Lite brite” sign tossing the finger wasn’t a terrorist device at a glance is mind numbing. Especially considering the city was one of the recipients of millions of Homeland Security dollars.
Guess what Boston? We want out money back…with interest.
02/9/07 at 6:19 pm
Heh, Keith Olbermann had something entertaining to say about the whole blinky bomb scare.
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=ca438e50-5dbb-4ea4-8f3e-cc3155d55d19&f=00&fg=email
02/9/07 at 7:58 pm
Ridiculous. It’s no big deal when Cartoon Network has to pay Boston $2 million — that’s a nice gesture, and for the all the advertising they’ve gotten, a pretty good deal to boot. But that anybody would lose their job for such a thing is unthinkable.
02/9/07 at 9:44 pm
This is actually good news in a way. We can only hope that the next president of Cartoon Network is more proactive than Jim was and cancels DragonBall, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc., reduces Futurama to one episode a night, extends Adult Swim to Fridays, cancels “Tim and Eric” and fires those two goofs, and puts pressure on Viz to speed up the dubbing of Inu Yasha episodes so they can finish that series and “rotate it out” for a year or two.
02/10/07 at 3:32 am
Wow Sven, way to miss the point and whine about what you don’t like. Glad you could add something to the conversation.
Something that I think is interesting is that the head of Cartoon Network and NOT the head of Adult Swim is the one that resigned. Did they need someone higher up than that or did they feel that the head of Adult Swim was worth too much to let resign?
02/10/07 at 4:35 am
I feel sorry for the guy. A bunch of stupid people in Boston- what’s to blow up in Boston?- got more afraid than New Yorkers? Lemme get this straight: New York lost thousands in one attack, and there have been multiple in that city, but they were unfazed by this.
Boston- have they ever suffered a terrorist attack?- gets a few, and they all need to change their diapers. That’s EXACTLY the type of thing a terrorist would want to happen: for a bunch of dumb people to get scared over something minor, and go off the deep end.
I think Boston owes Cartoon Network and Jim Samples an apology for being so stupid and making things so complicated.
02/10/07 at 10:31 am
I think there’s two points here.
#1 - You want to advertise something? Stick to conventional means. We live in a justifyably paranoid society, or have we all forgotten 9/11. A whole lot of this world hates us, and it is not implausible that something like this could’ve been dangerous.
#2 - Everything I’ve heard about Samples indicates that his removal from Cartoon Network is no big loss. Granted, I can’t think of a single thing on that network that’s been worth my time since they pulled the plug on Justice League and Teen Titans. And that certainly includes Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
02/10/07 at 12:03 pm
You know what’s sad about this? Before 9/11, the thought that someone would crash airplanes into a building was pretty laughable. Now, not so much. If the Boston police hadn’t taken the scare seriously and it turned out even one of the devices was a bomb, what then? They did their jobs and, fortunately for everyone, it was a hoax so the late-night comics and knee-jerk bloggers have some fodder for a few weak jokes and a couple of week’s worth of self-righteous finger-wagging.
Not sure if Heidi was being facetious or not, but the whole situation — up to and including the scapegoating of Jim Samples (what about Sam Travis Ewen?) — is definitely an example of the terrorists “winning,” and not necessarily the ones we’re fighting in Iraq. Terrorism doesn’t always mean blowing shit up.
02/10/07 at 2:27 pm
Guy -
The prolem is that the Boston PD, the Bomb Squad and several Federal agencies got everyone worked up over batteries and a circuit board. Where’s the detonator? Where’s the explosive? Answer - nowhere…and yet they felt they had to save face and detonate a lite brite.
They all have been spending millions of our tax dollars since 9/11 training to identify and assess potential terrorist threats, and then deal with them. The idea that they couldn’t I.D. this as a non-threat (if the bird finger weren’t enough of a clue) immediately says that they are incompetent.
It also points out we were foolish to put our trust in their “expertise” in the first place. Heidi’s right - the terrorists have won because Boston panicked instead of dealing with it. Now that they have egg on their faces they’re looking for payback. CN is going to pay a bunch of money to them.
Again, Boston you are stupid. stupid. stupid and you have heightened our culture of fear for no reason. We paid for your training with our tax dollars so we wouldn’t have to live in fear - so we would know that we have experts on hand to identify and eliminate threats before they happen…
Boston bring your resume’ and some whiteout into my office. We need to reassess your qualifications “to protect and serve.” While we’re at it - let’s go over your paychecks since 2002. I smell a rebate.
02/10/07 at 3:01 pm
Where’s the detonator? Where’s the explosive? Answer - nowhere…
And how did they realize neither were present and it was a hoax? By investigating the call about a suspicious item that looked like a bomb and ensuring that, just in case it was, no one would be harmed by it if it went off while they were investigating.
I live in New York City, and work about a 1/2-mile south of the former World Trade Center, so I don’t take things like this lightly. It’s easy to play armchair crisis management from the safety of hindsight, but slamming Boston for their response is oversimplifying the situation in the name of what…lame attempts at snark and political commentary? Whatever.
02/10/07 at 9:38 pm
You know…this guy should not have been forced out. But the appropriate response from the City of Boston when they got a call about a possible bomb was exactly what they did. The stupidest thing they could have done in this day and age is to shrug and say, “Looks like a lite brite. Probably not a bomb.” People who know nothing about what can and can’t be used as a bomb have been awfully smug about the end results. But I don’t really trust those people to know better than the bomb experts.
So again, Cartoon Network should not have fired anyone, Boston’s police didn’t over react. Certainly, some of the officials did in the wake of it. But most of the people saying “It’s just a lite brite” are not nearly as smart as they think they are.
02/12/07 at 2:02 am
It annoys me that people keep calling this a “hoax”. These weren’t meant to be fake bombs, there was no intent to deceive anyone.
10/15/07 at 11:51 am
please sujest me some cartoon critics