Don't Hit the Panic Button On Your Remote

Boston got a taste of what it's like to be one of The Reporters Who Cover Television yesterday when Cartoon Network's guerrilla marketing campaign sent the city into high pants-wetting mode. Blinking electronic devices that caused authorities to shut down parts of the city were just part of Turner Broadcasting's campaign for its animated series "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Not coincidentally, an "ATHF" movie opens next month.

Spooky guerrilla marketing campaigns for TV series are old hat for TRWCT. Why just the other day, they all got packages from ABC Family network containing vials of white powder. The mind reels, thinking how the mayor of Boston would have reacted to one of those. (ABC Family explained that the white powder was instant faux snow and that the reporters were supposed to add water and enjoy the winter wonderland that would erupt.)

And TRWCT are still chuckling about the night during the TV Press Tour when they all returned to their hotel rooms, turned on the lights and simultaneously broke the standing high-jump record upon discovering someone had broken into their rooms and scrawled the word "Redrum" in lipstick across their bathroom mirrors -- just like Jack Nicholson did in the movie set in that Estes Park, Colo., hotel not long before he tried to separate his wife's head from her shoulders with an ax.

It was just those pranksters at ABC marketing reminding them to be sure and review the upcoming remake of "The Shining."

And who can forget the time -- another press tour -- when TRWCT returned to their hotel rooms -- again, late at night -- to discover their bathrooms were cordoned off with police crime-scene tape. That one went over particularly well with The Women Who Cover Television.

More recently, in March '05, the merry marketing pranksters at NBC were sent out to write "Omnium finis imminet" -- loosely, "The end is near" -- on trash cans, buildings and sidewalks in cities nationwide. They took snaps of their work and posted those images on the Internet. Interestingly, that campaign did not cause the kind of panic we saw in Boston yesterday because, of course, no one in this country knows Latin.

That was a guerrilla campaign for the NBC series "Revelations," which debuted in April 2005 and was canceled that May. Which is kind of the point.

For TV guerrilla marketers, the Holy Grail remains Paramount's spring 2006 campaign for the movie "Mission: Impossible III" in which scary little plastic rectangular thingummies with wires springing from them were planted in 4,500 Los Angeles Times newspaper boxes. The thingummies played the theme to the flick when customers bought a paper, as well as scaring the stuffing out of them.

That one brought out the Los Angeles County sheriff's arson squad, which blew up a newspaper box in an upscale suburb, and more than 50 patients and dozens of staff at the Veterans Affairs hospital in West L.A. were evacuated for two hours after a clerk bought a newspaper inside the hospital. Eventually they learned from the newspaper and Paramount that it was marketing -- not terrorism.

Boston's troubles started yesterday when a bus passenger saw one of the devices attached to a highway ramp support beam. Soon, other devices were spotted. Because officials of the city of Boston did not contact one of TRWCT, they did not realize until much later that at least one of the scary gadgets depicted a character from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" -- which is about an order of french fries named Frylock, his milkshake pal Master Shake and a meatball named Meatwad, who used to safeguard the world when the program debuted in 2000 but these days, not so much -- giving them the middle finger.

Instead, traffic was halted, buildings evacuated. The Department of Homeland Security sprang into action, assuring Americans yesterday afternoon that, as the Associated Press reported, it had found "no credible reports of other devices being found elsewhere in the country."

Which is ironic because Turner Broadcasting said in a statement that it had planted loads of these devices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, San Francisco and Philly. Department of Homeland Security doing its usual great work.

Late yesterday, Turner Broadcasting Chairman and CEO Phil Kent issued an apology to the citizens of Boston in which he said his company had directed the third-party marketing firm that posted the advertisements to take them down immediately in all 10 cities. Kent added: "We appreciate the gravity of this situation and, like any responsible company would, are putting all necessary resources toward understanding the facts surrounding it as quickly as possible."

ABC's Charlie Gibson led his evening newscast with a report on Cartoon Network's clever campaign:

Good evening. It is a measure of just how jittery, how on-edge this country still is. In Boston today, a number of suspicious packages were found near bridges, underneath an interstate, and near a medical center. Parts of Boston were shut down for a time. Even a section of the Charles River was closed.

It turned out to be a stupid stunt. But a good object lesson that when suspicious packages are found, people do react.

Still, some of The Reporters Who Cover Television said yesterday they were surprised to hear about the Cartoon Network stunt.

They think guerrilla TV marketing is sort of over because it's not cost-effective and while it grabs headlines, that doesn't necessarily translate into viewers for a show. Yes, the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" scare led the evening news, but no one who watches "World News Tonight" is going to watch Cartoon Network; or this particular show, part of the network's late-night Adult Swim programming, which targets teenage guys; or go to the movie. It was just some old guy saying, Those damned kids.