AMC crushing Twitter dreams

This will be a follow up on the blog written by Tiffany Monhollon titled "It's Personal. It's Business. Mad Men, Twitter and Branding Online."

Monhollon brings to light an interesting story. AMC runs a show called Mad Men. The content of the show is not important to our discussion here. Recently, characters from the show began using Twitter as a way to communicate with fans. One fan in particular was so excited about this prospect, he decided to become his favorite character from the show on Twitter.

He went so far as to email AMC and inform them of what he was doing. It seems as though this would cover his tail with any type of legal backlash. In fact, it did quite the opposite. AMC took immediate measures to stop the characters and others posing as characters from twittering.

The rest of the story can be read at the first link. My question is this: is this a good move by AMC? It seems as though they were receiving free publicity from all of the twittering and so far, there was no harm done. What types of problems could arise for AMC if they leave these branded characters free to twitter as they please? Also, what does this say to the audience of the show who may enjoy feeling as though they are getting constant status updates about their favorite characters?

AMC has already chosen to handle this issue by shutting it down. This type of PR seems like it would negatively effect the channel as well as the show. I contend that viewers will be upset about the issues above and will thus hinder AMC and the show in future attempts push the programming.