LA residents say digital ads are “stealing the night”
A blazing row is continuing to rage in Los Angeles after the city council gave its approval to upgrade hundreds of the city’s billboards to plasma technology.
In a syndicated National Public Radio show this week, Los Angeles news anchor Gloria Hillard demonstrated how residents are upset with the new plasma-enabled billboards, claiming that they are “stealing the night”.
According to resident Christina Pipkin, the new billboards appear on the LA skyline after dark as bright shiny objects that change colour every ten seconds or so.
The problem, Hillard said, dates back to 2002, when the city rejected proposals to implement new billboard technology that would have replaced paper signs. Several billboard operators took the city to court, claiming the city ordinance was illegal, with the city authorities settling the case by agreeing with the billboard companies that they could convert 850 of their signs to plasma screens.
According to Dennis Hathaway, another local resident and the president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight in Los Angeles, the result is that local residents’ visual environment has been degraded.
In a radio interview, Hathaway said that Los Angeles is now “under siege from the outdoor-advertising industry”.
Outdoor foe
Meanwhile, in Hillard’s radio show, Los Angeles city councilman Jack Weiss said he is one of several people on the council who look back on the vote to settle with the billboard operators “with a lot of regret”.
Weiss told listeners that the $7.2bn outdoor-advertising industry in the US is a formidable foe. “Every new law is a guaranteed new lawsuit. The revenue that they receive for these signs is astronomical. That’s why it’s always worth their while to sue first and ask questions later,” he said.
But Jeff Golimowski, a spokesperson for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America also interviewed on Hillard’s radio show, said that billboards have been a part of American life for more than 100 years.
Digital billboards, he said, are not overly bright. “In fact, they’re using just a fraction of their power at night, as opposed to during the day when they have to be brighter in order to be seen with the glare of the sun,” he added.
As a result of lobbying from the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight in Los Angeles and other bodies, the Los Angeles city council is reportedly asking that the digital billboards be reviewed under state environmental laws.
It is also proposing a six-month moratorium on new digital billboards in the meantime.
the National Public Radio show
banbillboardblight.org
www.oaaa.org
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