Do we really want more flashy digital billboards?
King County and the city of Tacoma are considering whether to allow bright, image-flipping electronic billboards recalling those seen along I-5 near Fife in Pierce County. Critics, including some suburban cities, are fighting the idea of "billboards on amphetamines."
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Activists aren’t the only parties alarmed by the county proposal. Most of the billboards slated to go digital lie in territory that Renton and Burien are either considering or planning on annexing, in keeping with a county policy of divesting urban areas to the cities. Both ban digital billboards. They urged the county to either reject the ordinance or amend it to exclude potential annexation areas and avoid grandfathering in signs they wouldn’t allow.
“Clear Channel approached us a year or so ago” to propose installing digital boards, says Renton city planner Alex Piesch. As in Kent, the company promised self-regulation, public-service announcements, and emergency bulletins. “We didn’t find the arguments persuasive,” Piesch added, noting that the city is trying to remove, not add billboards.
The City of Tacoma, which also wants to clear out billboard clutter, saw going digital as a way to do that. In 1997 it passed a law drastically reducing the number of boards on its streets. In 2007, as the deadline for removal neared, Clear Channel sued to block it. This year the company struck a settlement with the city: It would remove five conventional boards and relinquish permits to build 10 more in exchange for each digital board it erected. That suggests how valuable the new e-signs are to billboard operators.
This deal is more favorable than the one King County struck, but it’s still met a wall of public opposition. According to Tacoma planner Shirley Schultz, 95 percent of the 254 citizens who weighed in opposed the measure. Last month the Tacoma Planning Commission urged the settlement be scrapped and proposed a counter-ordinance banning digital billboards. Last week, Tacoma’s News Tribune reported that its mayor and city council seemed to be backing off from the settlement.
Schultz says Tacomans’ wariness is piqued by the proximity of the blazing gauntlet through Fife and Milton. Clear Channel wouldn’t install the same sort of flashing billboards, but Pat O’Leary, the state Transportation Department’s chief highway-sign watchdog, says that strip still offers a cautionary example. Many of the electronic signs along it are actually on-premise signs for businesses on private, rather than tribal, lands. As such they’re permitted and regulated by the state.
O’Leary says their owners tend to follow the rules — for a while. But it’s so easy to tweak the digital settings, and the competition for eyeballs is so relentless, that they perennially ratchet up their wattage and add flashing and animation, in a process of mutual escalation. The state sends cease-and-desist orders; the owners comply, then ratchet up again. “It’s kind of like speeding,” sighs O’Leary.
The same sort of escalation is already visible on Seattle’s buildings, where sign companies keep pushing or breaking city rules to hang ever bigger, more legally tenuous supergraphic “wallscapes.” In Los Angeles, a city fighting to roll back an epidemic of electronic billboards, multiple competing e-boards, rolling out of sync, compound the glare and distraction at some intersections. The 21 King County billboards in question hardly threaten such a spectacle. But if Clear Channel proceeds from there to get digital billboards approved in Seattle, the prospect won’t seem so remote.
That’s not the only unforeseen (but entirely foreseeable) consequence of allowing digital streetscapes. Billboards, like everything else electronic, can malfunction, sometimes with head-spinning results. And they’re a hacker’s dream, choice prey for digital pranksters and message jammers. No such hacking has been reported in this country, but last year unidentified hackers ran a two-minute porn video on a downtown Moscow billboard.
Perhaps the County Council will address some of these concerns when it takes up the digital billboards again. For now, says Councilmember Hague, the billboard-shy suburban cities should commit to annexing the areas in question or get out of the way. For now, she says, “we’re the government there, so we should move ahead.”
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 5:52 a.m. Inappropriate
Thanks Eric for your reporting on Clear Channel's efforts to co-opt public spaces for their private gain. Billboards in general are such an eye-sore. My neighborhood example is the giant sign on the northeast corner of MLK and Jackson. These digital billboards are an abomination. When I first came down I-5 and saw that digital sign in Milton, I was blown away that something like that could be legal....but it still stands years later. Recently, I noticed the one on First that is illustrated on the first page of the article. Mr. Potter won - the other part of the movie was just an angel's dream - and we are living and breathing in Pottersville.
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 8:55 a.m. Inappropriate
These are indeed a blight on the landscape; the optical equivalent of a shuckster contstantly yelling in your ear.
The hue and cry will soon be raised about how we over-regulate business. I predict: "If you don't want to see it, don't go outside!".
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 9:53 a.m. Inappropriate
We've been mustering to defeat the industrial blight complex known as Clear Channel Outdoor for years. Join our facebook group! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Turn-Out-That-Light-Tacoma/105050642910536 also my friend Kevin has been chronicling billboards in Tacoma in various stages of advanced decay in his series HEY CLEAR CHANNEL CLEAN UP YOUR CRAP here http://i.feedtacoma.com/KevinFreitas/hey-clear-channel-clean-up-009/ THANKS CROSSCUT!
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 12:43 p.m. Inappropriate
Will the **first** one to leave Tacoma turn off the billboards?
(BTW, good to hear from Mr. Scigliano again)
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 12:47 p.m. Inappropriate
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm just tired of everybody trying to get my attention and sell me things that I don't need or can't afford. Billboards, email spam, piles of newspaper adds (without newspapers!) dropped on my front porch, direct mail, dumb names on our stadiums, etc.
So.... whether digital or old-school, the fewer billboards, the better, in my opinion. I have no idea what the right balance is, but in this case, I think less is the new more. The flashy digital billboards are very effective in getting one's attention, and thus distracting our already distracted drivers.
And while we're taking road safety, why is it that these new car headlights are allowed to be so incredibly bright? Should it be legal to blind our fellow drivers in the interest of our own ability to see? I think not.
My rant is now complete. Thank you for another interesting story.
- Joe
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 1:56 p.m. Inappropriate
We can put these along the roads if they also agree to put them between their offices and Puget Sound.
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 3:36 p.m. Inappropriate
Conventional billboards are bad enough but digital billboards are in no way equivalent. One digital billboard has the ability to disfigure an entire landscape and should be regulated like other public hazards such as hog farm lagoons or nuclear waste.
Posted Tue, Jun 28, 4:29 p.m. Inappropriate
I know! Let's just go all the way and allow floating Blade Runner advertisement blimps while we're at it.
Posted Fri, Jul 1, 8:24 a.m. Inappropriate
Along the freeway, they are extremely distracting, and when it's dark they're so bright as to be almost blinding. When it's dark and foggy, like during most commutes in winter, the suddenly changing lights flash and illuminate the fog in a most startling way, especially when it's behind you. Thus, I think these billboards are not just an eyesore, they are a driving hazard. I wonder how many accidents they might have contributed to?
Posted Fri, Jul 1, 10:50 a.m. Inappropriate
Distraction and roadside blight aside, the irony is that the more of these "standout" billboards there are, the less effective they become as far as conveying any message. And as far as I'm concerned the more someone shouts "Look at ME, look at ME, look at ME", the more likely I am to ignore them completely. I feel the same about splashy, flashy ads on web pages... and a pop-up will virtually assure that I will NEVER buy anything from that sponsor.
I agree wholeheartedly with jsperry above. (About the blinding headlights too!)
Posted Sat, Jul 2, 11:03 a.m. Inappropriate
This rather heartbreaking story should turn any fence-sitters against digital billboards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v;=7aQjPWXWNGo
Another thing not mentioned by this article: digital billboards make noise! Tacoma has a lot of billboards along 6th Ave, a highly walkable strip of restaurants and shops. Replacing them with these would be horrid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v;=AoKlQ-Dufao
The people of Tacoma might not be so rabidly against Clear Channel if they actually maintained their existing billboards. Their sky-trash of rusty poles and ripped signs shows what they really think of us ad-consumers:
http://i.feedtacoma.com/KevinFreitas/hey-clear-channel-clean-up-009/
Last, I just want to reinforce what was already stated in this article, that the people of Tacoma aren't just against digital billboards, but against all billboards. Tacoma passed a measure in 1997 to ban the biggest, ugliest, worst-located billboards, and gave CC 10 years to recoup their investment. After 10 years, CC sued Tacoma for the right to keep them indefinitely. They put up a "Constitutions Matter" message on all their billboards, presumably so they could argue in court that billboards are constitutionally protected free speech. See http://www.exit133.com/1989/constitutions-matter-we-hear.
Even though there are plenty of examples of other municipalities banning billboards (see http://i.feedtacoma.com/Erik/new-legal-analysis-tacomas-1997/, and the verbose http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context;=stephen_durden), CC had the balls to offer to Tacoma to take down most of their paper billboards if they could get digital ones instead — and amazingly, nearly succeeded! Although the Tacoma council and government is apparently rather gullible, the people of Tacoma are not, and are demanding that the 1997 law is upheld, even if that means going to court over it (which it probably will). I'm sure the support of our friends and neighbors around Puget Sound would be much appreciated.
Posted Thu, Jul 7, 8:38 p.m. Inappropriate
I recently saw a really moving piece on what happened in West St. Paul, Minnesota called TRASH IN THE SKY.
http://www.oohooc.com/?p=41
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