One digital billboard can do the work of 6 to 8 conventional static billboards. In my opinion they look much more attractive that the static billboard. The cities are trading off the tradition static billboards at a ratio of 4 to 6 static billboards for one digital, that sounds like a win, win for everyone, right?. Not really unless you are a large billboard company that would like to trade off your income billboards.
Some of the politicians and garden clubs would take them all down if and plant flowers or a trees. Can you imagine Times Square without its electronic billboards? How about the flashing billboards in Las Vegas? Would you take the famous “Hollywood” landmark billboard down and plant a few bush or trees instead? What if you took all the billboards down? Stripped every American city naked of all the billboards and cleared them from the highways? Would that not be a desecration of the face of America? You bet it would and it is not going to happen.
I think you will be seeing less static and more digital billboards across America in the future as laws regulating and governing billboards get tighter. The trade-off of 4 to 6 static billboards for one digital is a great deal for the cities but not for all billboard companies. For instance a small mom and dad billboard shop in LA or Dallas may not have 4 to 6 billboards to trade-off for one digital billboard, where a large billboard company such as Clear Channel Outdoor which has many. How do you make this fair to the mom and dad operators? Their rights are also important; these kinds of laws knock them out of the race leaving a monopolized market by the large companies. The small guy loses once again.
It would be great to see the clutter cleaned up and quality control move in as long as it is not at the expense of the little people who make up the majority. If the mom and dad operator’s rights are to survive is important to take them into consideration when writing new laws by both state and local governments.
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