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Clear Channel Plans To Roll Out Digital Billboards
Tree131 writes "Just in case you don't have enough distractions driving on the highway, Clear Channel is planning to roll out digital billboards. The new billboards will feature ads that depend on the time of day as well as the general area demographics.
I wonder how long before someone with lots of time on their hands hacks into the system and starts tampering with the messages."
We even have digital billboards in Salt Lake already..... I thought they had these everywhere..
Hmm..... I'm pretty sure that this is somehow a gross invasion of our privacy.
I'd say about as quickly as my cable has been hacked to tamper with the commercials and programming I watch.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Clear Channel can then bend over and take it in the ass like they have no the Free Speech issue.
We demonize Clear Channel as this media goliath that can't be hurt or tamed by anything, but the way they are fellating the government lately, it seems like they are willing to do anything with the right incentive.
The question is how to persuade them to support Free Speech and good music.
I have been pwned because my
Will they have X-rated ads at 2 am?
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Feeling ugly? Check this
Are going to love this. Imagine the number of court cases which will litigate agains CC when they claim that the driver was distracted by the billboards. I wonder how this will relate to the laws which are being considered for banning in-car dvd players....
"I wonder how long before someone with lots of time on their hands hacks into the system and starts tampering with the messages." Who's going to need 'alot of time on thier hands' to start working on this? This could be better than revengeworld.com for the more sadistic and technically capable out there. So who's willing to throw in on how long after the first one's up does it get hacked? This billboard could be entertaining in more ways than 1!
-- Eekrano
A pre-digital era subvertising guide. Imagine the opportunities on a subverted digital board.
Everytime I drive by it, it displays a beer ad. How did they know??? RFID chips in bottles? WOW! Technology!
Hopefully it will be running on Windows Me. That way, most of the time we won't be distracted by the blue screens (of death). The color might even be soothing.
Electric Monkey Pants
It's about time the common man can let Clear Channel know how they feel.
I saw a site that had pictures of digital billboards with Windows Error messages on them. This is the picture I saw, although I can't remember the original site. It's not a crash but apparently, someone's missing a driver disk.
My dad's a truck driver and keeps a laptop with a 1xRTT card in but also uses his WiFi card when at truck stops. When he was drivng through Utah he kept picking up a SSID and since I setup his wifi equipment he calls me asking what the hell is this SSID he kept picking up and goofing his connections whenever he stoped somewhere to access the net.
Turns out it was a billboard company in Salt Lake who after I contacted them really didnt care that they're systems were out there broadcasting their SSID's and assigning people's laptops a friggin IP!!
I'm curious if someone's managed to redesign a few billboards out there.
Just what people need, a TV on the roadside.... I think the real question is how long before they start showing Survivor on them ;)
Clear Channel can get a pretty good idea who's driving at any hour a day based on adding up the radio listening data... they can do supplemental surveys to subtract out at-work listeners so that they only count in-car listeners to figure out what the demographic that's going to pass their billboards at each hour of the day will be.
Their killer app will be to link together packages that promise to reach a certain number of impressions to a given demographic.. based on who's expected to drive by at the hours that the given ad is up. That's what ad buyers really want, is to only count the people who are likely to consider buying the product being pitched... everyone else doesn't count. Doing it this way, they'll be able to get more milage out of their existing boards.
Do ya think goatse.cx causes accidents?
I think that there, perhaps, should be a strict limit on how many different types of distractions a driver can be legally exposed to before it is no longer their fault when they crash. This could be a sort of self solving problem, whereby advertisers will not advertise in high accident locations due to legislation saying that they are in fact responsible for the accidents in said locations.
I also happen to agree very strongly with the school of thought that DVD players in Vehicles should not have screens in a location visible to the driver, PERIOD. There should not even be a discussion on this, it is just stupid. Would you put a strobe light on your steering wheel and drive at night with it on? Probably not, but I guarantee that there is someone out there stupid enough to try it.
At any rate, there has to be a limit imposed on some of this at some point in the near future. It is a proven fact that aboslutely no profit driven business will regulate themselves at the cost of the bottom line, whether it means indirectly causing death in the mean time or not.
That really is my homepage, no kidding.
Damn moderators can't get anything right!
:)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
"Damn TV, you've ruined my imagination, just like you've ruined my ability to -- to, um...uh...oh well."
wide screen TV! And to think in the eighties I thought it was cool to steal strobing roadside lights!
;-)
Cheap digital picture frames! Whoot!
Quack, quack.
I take it no one here has ever been to Japan?(Specifically Tokyo witch is cluttered with the things)
Creative Demolition
Just think of the possibilities...now we can play tetris across the entire globe for all to see!
That is your hacker's dream? Christ, you might as well have said Atari's 'Tank' instead of Tetris. Me, I dream of a game of Pong on such devices. Everyone who has mastered intergalactic space travel, please raise your hand.
Boston's cabs have started sprouting Super(with a capital S) bright orange LED panels on top. They are displaying sports scores, or maybe very short news bits. Because of the brightness, they are virtually impossible to ignore, and exceptionally annoying. I'm almost positive I saw a Clear Channel logo at the bottom of the sign unit.
Screw Microsoft- there's plenty of competition these days. It's Clear Channel and the other super-huge media conglomerates that really frighten me.
At least the signs aren't animated. I give them about 6 months to figure that out. Personally, I hope someone takes Clear Channel to court over the existing signs violating some motor vehicle law.
Please help metamoderate.
an unlawful act.
But if you're going to do it anyway, take a video camera.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The FCC imposed a half-million dollar fine, and more seriously threatened to cancel their license due to the repeated flagrant violations. That is a risk simply not worth taking for them.
It will be interesting to see how they handle the whole idea. A lot of jurisdictions around here simply do not allow flashing or moving signs. I sure wouldn't want some movie distracting me at 80 on the freeway.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
Was? It's about 50 feet north of the Pierce/King county line, visible from I-5 (large full-color northbound, smaller partial-color southbound), featuring full-otion video, and (northbound) bright enough at night to make me squint. When it went in, accident rate along that portion of the freeway jumped up something like 10%, and people fought to have it removed. Unfortunately, it's still there, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who dreams of taking a wide-spread shotgun to it every time I see it.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
in other news, I name myself Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.
You'll be too drunk to see that far anyway.
paintball
IIRC that one still stands because it is on Native American Reservation land. That or it's grandfathered in, since electronic billboards are illegal in the state of Washington.
Maybe by properly supervising your children?
Seriously, how often are your kids far enough away that you can't hear what's going on?
paintball
I recently came back to France and noticed that the country side drives seemed a lot... cleaner. It took me a while to figure out that there were no more billboard signs. Upon inquiry I learnt that they are now illegal outside of city boundaries. Very nice.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
If ClearChannel is going to insist pushing these digital billboards with "time of day" related messages, then I hope they will turn down the brightness of their billboards at night as well.
chongo (was here)
Clear Channel's main service is piping advertising to the populace and their customers are those who pay Clear Channel to pump ads. Though they would prefer to stay out of the public's attention, the executives are very, very up front about it. To achieve that goal, a minimum of music or other non-revenue generating transmissions must be used until people can get by on just the ads.
Personally, I look on advertising as noise at best and disinformation at worst. Given the effectiveness of marketing and lobbying, you can also raise questions about it subverting or circumventing the democratic process.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.