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."

Comments

Nothing new?

[Dj Stingray]

We even have digital billboards in Salt Lake already..... I thought they had these everywhere..

Re:Nothing new?

[Wakkow]

That's what I thought.. Here in Sacramento, over near Cal Expo, there's one that was mentioned on slashdot a while ago that tracked what radio stations people listened to that drove by.

It runs Windows.. I know because I've seen it blue screened before.

Re:Nothing new?

[Dj Stingray]

Wow, after reading my post, I just realized how badder my grammer is then most people.

Re:Nothing new?

[Peeet]

Oh yeah, well we have one in Cincinnati. Beat that, damn mormons...

and I quote: "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."

Re:Nothing new?

[gefafwysp]

We've had these in Britain by the motorways for ages, but they always seem to be advertising something called "Major delays on M6 at J15".

Your written correspondence is currently broadcasting a postal address. With this, someone can begin attacking your house!

Re:First....

[Alan]

Hmm..... I'm pretty sure that this is somehow a gross invasion of our privacy.

How long until it's hacked?

[Neil Blender]

I'd say about as quickly as my cable has been hacked to tamper with the commercials and programming I watch.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Well, just call some Congressional hearings

[ObviousGuy]

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.

Re:Well, just call some Congressional hearings

[Babbster]

Clear Channel, like any other huge media company, doesn't have a "true" political leaning. Their only concern is making money. If conservative talk show hosts make them money, they put them on the air. If an ultra-liberal was going to make them money (before the JJ flap, they WERE carrying Howard Stern on several stations - hardly a good "Christian" program), they'd put that person on the air.

To use Rush Limbaugh as an example, he would have been just as big had he been a militant liberal for the simple fact that he and his show were entertaining. During his peak period, I listened every morning...not because I agreed with all (any?) of his opinions, but because it was good listening. These days, when I get up early enough, I listen to Don Imus [in the Morning] and disagree with at least half of his rants (many of them leftist - he's on the Kerry bandwagon at the moment). But it's a good show, so I enjoy it.

It's not always (almost never?) content that makes people listen to radio shows. It's how the show is put together and the quality of the host(s). These media companies know that better than anybody.

Re:Well, just call some Congressional hearings

[killjoe]

" Clear Channel, like any other huge media company, doesn't have a "true" political leaning."

Nonsense. Most corporations give more money to one party then the other. Some corporations give money depending on who is in power but others (like clearchannel) always give more money to one party then the other.

It's patently nonsensical to claim that clear channel does not have a political leaning. They are clearly republicans. Not only does the corporation give way more money to republicans (around 200K for republicans around 25K for democrats) but they have also pulled ads that critize the president.

Ads

[thefiremonk]

Will they have X-rated ads at 2 am?

Lawyers

[noelo]

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....

Re:Lawyers

[ahfoo]

I was wondering the same thing.
Living outside of Taipei and commuting into town, I'm already exposed to quite a few digital billboards. I think they're cool and seem perfectly normal in Taiwan, but it's worth noting that Taiwan's sign standards are a lot closer to Vegas than any other western city I've seen. And I recall that in San Diego and LA even flashing neon signs are prohibited except in certain "historical" districts.
Adding that with California's prohibition on front seet LCDs makes it seem this is going to be a difficult trick to pull off at least in California.

Re:Lawyers

[33degrees]

Of course lawyers are going to live this; chances are, at least half the ads are going to be FOR lawyers:

"Hello, have you just gotten into an accident while looking at this billboard? If so, then call us, at..."

The other half of the adds will be for insurance companies.

everytime I drive by it....

[Dj Stingray]

Everytime I drive by it, it displays a beer ad. How did they know??? RFID chips in bottles? WOW! Technology!

Re:everytime I drive by it....

[kd5ujz]

Your not constantly listening to country by any chance are you?

The OS

[Paladin144]

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.

I can't wait to hack one

[teamhasnoi]

with a .22.

It's about time the common man can let Clear Channel know how they feel.

Re:I can't wait to hack one

[Anonymous Coward]

The Telco EQ is 'designed' to not be damaged by a .22 round. If CC follows a similar design idea, you won't get too far with your .22.

If you plan on 'reprograming' CC eq, I'd suggest a .308 or for the serious 'reprogrammer' - the 50 cal.

I know the .308 and the .243 rounds will put a hole in a 1/4 inch hunk of plate steel, and will dent 3/8 inch. I have no idea what a 50 cal will do....

Windows Error messages

[Gary Destruction]

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.

This is Funny

[Bruha]

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.

Re: This is Funny

[Black Parrot]

> > I'm curious if someone's managed to redesign a few billboards out there.

> A far more interesting hack would be to 'Own' the billboard and

...use them to DDoS ClearChannel.

Synergy with radio

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:Synergy with radio

[jafuser]

How long do you think it'll be before they OCR your license plate using cameras spread around town, track where you go, where you park, and then advertise to you based on your shopping habits?

They wouldn't even need to necessarily know your name or anything, but your license plate would make for a nice unique identifier, like a browser cookie holding a UUID.

When you're driving down the highway these dynamic billboards can then adjust the advertisment to fit whatever "average" ad best fits the group of cars who have the billboard in view.

With enough cameras installed around a city, and a little fancy tag recognition + OCR technology, I don't see what's to stop them from being able to do this now.

Ooh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do ya think goatse.cx causes accidents?

Re:Too many temptations

[Technician]

If they use a regular FM broadcast (why pay a paging company) and it's subchannel to send the information to the billboard, then the protocol would be sniffable. The trick would be swamping the input on the billboard to get your signal into it. You would have to be pretty close to do it since you are competing with a 50KW station most of the time.

For more information on subchannels, Google SCA subchannel.

cabs in Boston

[SuperBanana]

We even have digital billboards in Salt Lake already

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.

I don't encourage such

[KalvinB]

an unlawful act.

But if you're going to do it anyway, take a video camera.

Ben

Fuck FCC, not Clear Channel if you want to

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

Re:Why do you think they call them BillBoards, any

[forevermore]

There was a big one heading in to Seattle back in '98

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.

reeduckulous titles

[tormentae agent]

In unveiling its new strategy, Clear Channel named long-time digital media strategist Michael Hudes as executive vice president of corporate development.

in other news, I name myself Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

Waste of money.

[raehl]

You'll be too drunk to see that far anyway.

In France...

[dargaud]

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.

digital billboard light pollution

[chongo]

My concern with the digital billboards that I have seen is they add to the light pollution of the nighttime sky. In the silicon valley we have two on 101 (Redwood City and Santa Clara) that spew photons across the spectrum at a glaring rate.

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.