Counter Strike…

Just kidding, lighten up you two!

Can you point to any neutral studies, with cites so that I can find them?

As for the data on people “tolerating” billboards, I have seen many studies – scores of them – asking people questions about whether they use billboards, whether they like them, whether they should be banned, whether they are helpful, etc. You might find 15% of people who want them banned. Close to 80% use them. About 60% like them and the rest mostly understand that they are a necessary evil.

If you’ve ever traveled – and I hope you have, because I have traveled a lot – you will have to admit that many local hotels and restaurants and attractions advertise on billboards coming into town. Those billboards are absolutely essential to their profitability. You kill those signs and you will quite literally kill their businesses within a few short years after that. I’ve seen many studies on this, as well.

The reason you see PSAs is largely because the signs are not leased yet, but what you have to understand is the business thinking behind the expansion of the sign base. It is very difficult to get locations and permits for new billboards, and with advertisers increasing, you have to get the boards while the getting is good. It’s a long-term investment that may take ten years to realize, but the signs are so incredibly valuable that it makes sense financially. We’re right now in the middle of an unusual expansion of billboards here in Oregon and these companies are taking advantage of the situation to set themselves up for the future. I’m not saying that’s such a great thing, just that it’s not a mystery why it’s happening.

Anyway, my point really is that first, the billboard lobby is incredibly powerful and you’re going to be hard-pressed to get anywhere taking them on; second, the signs are incredibly valuable, and at least within 660 feet of a federally funded highway or interstate, they can’t be forced down without payment of just compensation, which is phenomenally high; and third, the present view of billboards, which combines those offering marketing/advertising into the same category as those offering information/direction to local businesses, is making a real solution to the problem nearly impossible to find.

Good luck with that idea of getting the state to stop spending tax money on billboards, by the way. Some of those are donated. The Lottery ones are there because they work so well the State would be shirking its fiduciary obligations to the voters who authorized the Lottery if they didn’t advertise to get people to play. And the billboard companies are quite supportive of politicians. I remember sitting in Gretchen Kafoury’s office in Portland City Hall back during my billboard fight talking about what we could do about the problem – she seemed supportive of our effort and was a liberal, after all – and she had a mini Ackerley billboard decoration sitting in the middle of her conference table. I took it as a subtle message as to her loyalties.

Personally, I love graphic art and don’t mind billboards in most locations – the one I fought was in a particularly inappropriate location, but generally I’m positive toward their existence because we really aren’t overrun with them like other places I’ve seen. I personally think the anti-billboard sentiment comes more from an aversion to commercialism than anything else. But that is not a widespread sentiment in our culture, which is why I think the anti-billboard movement has never gained much traction.

The Oregonian recently ran a piece on billboards where a guy who was advertising on one said he wished they would all go away—he felt that he couldn’t allow his competitor to use the billboard, so he advertised on it, but he preferred no billboards at all. I think a boycott of businesses that use billboards — coupled with letting the businesses know why you are avoiding one and choosing another — might very well have a good result.

As for product makers vs. local businesses, most real local businesses cannot afford billboards. The chain franchises (pizza joints, frypits, muffler joints, etc.) make advertising decisions and offer support for billboard campaigns, which the local guys can choose to do or not. Any local guy who says “Hey, when we support public radio underwriting we get business; when we do billboards, we get all kinds of grief” I think they’d do the former in preference to the latter.

Lastly, I think the number of blank billboards and billboards with government PSAs suggests that there are an awful lot of excess billboards. I should have included a call for the state to stop spending tax money on billboards–this is something that could easily be done and would help in the cause.

I’ll bet the billboards you hate are the ones for products and not the ones for small local businesses – the ones guiding you to their location, for instance from a freeway. But your plan here would hurt the small businesses and do nothing to the product manufacturers who lease the billboards that bother you more.

In any case, you are in the minority. Most people tolerate billboards quite well because they want the information on them. Most people do not approve of banning billboards. Most people like and use billboards to get information they want and need, particularly when traveling.