Mobile spam?

I have seen a few things done well using mobile marketing. In general I see it as annoying and intrusive as junk mail. I found this article in The New york times on how American Idol had “spammed” ( up for debate) 75 million customers urge them to watch American Idol…
In some countries like Denmark you would get fined for each and very sms, it would be a scary amount of money for AT&T to pay.
As I said I know some people will disagree with me on this, but I think they could have used their money in a smarter way.
I found a photo of the spam text on PSFK