Woman 'Shocked & Menaced' By Dexter Subway Ad Sues MTA & Showtime

VIA: Gothamist

The much-maligned series finale of Dexter was shocking to fans due to the fact that it was a terrible, no good, god-awful way to end the show. But it literally shocked at least one New Yorker, who was so traumatized by the subway advertisements for the final season, she broke her ankle. More [HERE]

Jon Burgerman - Head Shots

This isn't traditional ad takeover work, but I think its my favorite thing about 2014 thus far! Jon Burgerman is is an illustrator, musician, performer and just generally amazing in his yellow jacket uniform. Head Shots, is a series of photographs he is currently working on that takes advantage of the numerous opportunities to get blasted by outdoor advertising violence. While it's critical of the amount of visual violence we ingest, it's also just hilarious and playful. I can be a bit heavy handed with my own work and seeing such a light and nimble approach to ad criticism is inspiring. See more of Jon's work [HERE] and more Head Shots [HERE]

Posterboy Work Found on L Line

Riding the L train a few nights ago I saw this Posterboy work through the train car window. I quickly jumped off the train to snap some pics of a rare but exciting find. Enjoy!

L.A.’s Digital Billboards Go Dark. What’s Next?

VIA: Ban Billboard Blight

Does anyone out there believe that the final chapter of the city’s digital billboard saga has been written? That the collection of black billboard faces pasted into the visual landscape like minimalist art pieces is Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor’s farewell gesture to long-suffering residents of the city? More [HERE]

Legal Wars: End of the Line for L.A.’s Digital Billboards?

As per usual, Ban Billboard Blight has followed the digital billboard scandal in LA with incredible detail and has recently posted about a potential victory for city residents. What I find incredible about the entire sordid affair that is LA's billboard debacle, is the audacity with which OOH companies act in the face of public outcry and municipal demands. Most recently BBB reports that Clear Channel is threatening to sue the city of LA for well over 100 million dollars in lost revenue and damages if they force the company to remove its digital signage, which was put up illegally during a city wide billboard moratorium. I mean are you fucking kidding me? What other industry do you see acting illegally and then threatening to sue the government when they are told to stop doing illegal things? It is fantastically outrageous and at the same time incredibly disheartening that somehow they continue to get away with these tactics. It is scandals like this, and the many others we report on here at PublicAdCampaign that lead us to believe there is no compromise to allow outdoor advertising a place in our public spaces and that an outright ban is the only way to insure our streets and our minds are treated with the respect they deserve. 

VIA: Ban Billboard Blight

The final death knell for the 101 digital billboards now flashing their brilliantly-lighted ads on city streets may have been sounded yesterday, when the California Supreme Court refused to review a lower court ruling that says the permits issued for the signs must be revoked. More [HERE]

CBS Turning Billboard-Ad Business Into a REIT

Forget about paying taxes, there is a loophole for that.

VIA: Bloomberg News

CBS Corp. (CBS) shares surged the most in 17 months after the company said it will convert its outdoor advertising division into a real estate investment trust and seek a buyer for the European and Asian parts of that business.

The owner of the most-watched U.S. television network gained 10 percent to $41.80 at 9:38 a.m. in New York, the biggest intraday jump since August 2011. If completed, the actions may be worth $3 a share to CBS investors, said Michael Morris, an analyst at Davenport & Co. More [HERE]

Will L.A.’s Digital Billboards Be Going Dark? And If So, When?

The hits just keep on coming. It does not matter if the company is a small time wildposting OOH like NPA outdoor, or a mega giant like CBS, the quest is for profit without consideration. Something about the practice of selling public space to the highest bidder for commercial products we all don't need, makes you act above the law. I do not understand why our cities allow OOH companies to outright bully them despite having clear set laws imposed by citizens. The fact that we spend so much to defend ourselves from these agressive business maneuvers, instead of filling our schools with more teachers, boggles my mind. The business as a whole has proven its inability to get along with our cities and our rules and should be outright banned from operating at all. We would all be better off for it. 

VIA Ban Billboard Blight

Yesterday’s California Appeals Court decision ordering the revocation of permits issued for 100 digital billboards in Los Angeles was ample cause for celebration by those who have been saying since 2006 that the backroom deal struck with Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor to allow more than 800 of the brightly-lit signs with their rapidly changing messages was illegal because it violated the city’s own ordinances. More [HERE]

PosterBoy Arrest and the Need For A Democratic Outdoor Media Landscape

You may or may not know that PosterBoy, a friend and colleague in the battle to re-imagine our public media landscape, was sentenced to 11 months at Rikers island for the defacement of CBS Outdoor's subway advertisements in NYC. RJ at Vandalog expressed what I believe to be most peoples reaction to this sentence very clearly in a recent post on the topic. You should also immediately join the Free Posterboy Facebook page so there is at least a document of the outrage in numbers. I personally have yet to weigh in on this disturbing turn of events, partially because I am upset, and partially because I feel that beyond decrying the injustice that this sentence invokes, a real explanation as to why PosterBoy's actions are not criminal but rather a protest of the current monopolization of public space by large multinational corporations like CBS outdoor, has yet to be laid bare.

Timing being on our side for some reason, I was just sent the most incredible academic paper I have ever read on the topic, written by Kurt Iveson at the University of Sydney, school of Geosciences. In this paper he argues for a more democratic outdoor media landscape that addresses the concerns of the multiple public's which make up our shared urban environments. He obviously sees the need for open forms of outdoor communication in order to address the multiple public identities that make up our cities, as well as take advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of city residents in order to fulfill the great potential of our public environment and our cities as a whole. In the paper he points out that the new neo-liberal arrangements between outdoor advertising companies and public authorities to supply public services in exchange for exclusive advertising rights (like the arrangement between CBS outdoor and the Metropolitan Transit Authority) are expediting the monopolization of outdoor media opportunities across the board. Interestingly enough, the recent attack on our long time rival NPA by the NYC DOB (and NYSAT) can be seen as yet another way the city and large multinational outdoor advertising firms are joining forces to control outdoor advertising, and media opportunities in general. Essentially the city is saying away with the illegal, under the radar advertising, we will control where and when this media is placed without concern for whether or not the media being presented reflects the concerns of the residents of our city. Im still not okay with NPA's abuse of public space but there is an argument to be made that their non authorized use of the public environment might be one step better than overt control by NYC.

That said, I do not believe there is any way that advertising can exist in public without serious detriment to the residents of this city. We may argue for a more democratic use of the the outdoor media landscape but PublicAdCampaign's goal is ultimately its elimination from our shared public spaces.

In regards to Henry Matyjewicz (herein referred to as PosterBoy), he was not only making critical comments on the content of advertising with his work, but in doing so he was also making a critique on the form of advertising in major metropolitan cities. Where are the public's outdoor media opportunities in a city where public communications like street art are criminalized while the city champions full scale media buyouts by corporations intent on presenting messages of a singular commercial nature? As Kurt points out in his paper Branded Cities, our public media opportunities are fading fast and ultimately to the detriment of the residents of this city as well as the vibrancy of the city in general. Locking up Posterboy for addressing this incredibly important social health issue is not dissimilar from locking up any other number of civil protestors whose right to peaceful protest is secured by our constitution. (I'm not so naive that I do not understand the arguments against this claim to constitutional protection, but my belief in non-violent civil disobedience makes what Posterboy does civil protest in the most accepted form) If some eggs need to be broken (ads defaced) to bring this issue to light, so be it. Posterboy's incarceration is political silencing on behalf of a regime of publicity run by CBS outdoor and the City of New York. Maybe the judge, in his determination should have realized Posterboy's work is less vandalism than it is protest of how our public space is being sold to the highest bidder without concern for the public's interest in outdoor media communication. A better deliberation would have addressed this issue and questioned why, out of the hundreds of thousands of advertisements that are forced upon subway riders on a daily basis, is no space included for public thought. As well he might have used Posterboy's protest to question why a billion dollar outdoor advertising business is not benefiting our urban infrastructure and the cash strapped MTA more than the pitiful amount that it is now.

Either way the whole debacle wreaks of injustice and a city without the proper legal structures to address political dissension in public space. This was clear with the NYSAT arrests as well, and is a major issue we will all face as our urban spaces become less accessible and our need to protest this monopolization grows. PosterBoy's arrest goes far beyond street art and graffiti and raises serious questions about who has the right to access our public space. I don't care if you think Posterboy is wrong, the questions his work raises about the monopolization and control of our public environment are well worth the petty damage incurred at CBS's expense. The answers which might be plumbed from the depths of his artistic process could potentially have serious benefits for all of us and should therefore be taken seriously by our city authorities. As well, his incarceration and the antagonistic attitude of the DA in dealing with his case shows that the city is less intent on hearing the concerns of its residents as they enact their civic duties in NY's vibrant culture, and are more interested in treating us as criminals without a vital role in the exuberance of the streets we live on.

I am awaiting the Authors permission to make the full Branded Cities paper available for download. If permission is granted I will make the publication available as soon as I can. Until then...

Branded Cities Abstract:

"In many cities both rich and poor, new forms of outdoor advertising are emerging with potentially significant implications for the nature of the urban public realm. Public-private partnerships for advertising-funded provision of basic items of urban infrastructure such as bus shelters, street signs and public telephones have grown as a result of shifts towards neoliberal forms of urban governance. This article critically interogates the inplications of these new outdoor advertising arrangements for the urban public realm, and argues that they have potentially harmful consequences for the accessibility and diversity of the outdoor media landscape. It then proposes three strategies for the democratization of the outdoor media landscape. These strategies are not premised on an outright rejection of outdoor advertising, but rather seek to contest the monopolistic capture of outdoor media by public-private partnerships involving urban authorities and outdoor advertising companies."

M.T.A. Switches Firms for Transit Advertising

Looks like TITAN failed to make payments to the MTA, so they lost the contract to CBS and had a $20mill escrow account seized by the MTA.

VIA The New York Times

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York has ended its contract with Titan Worldwide, which had sold the advertising space on buses and commuter trains since January 2007, and shifted the assignment to the CBS Outdoor unit of the CBS Corporation. [More Here]

Eyesore of the Week: Brought to You By CBS Outdoor

Ban Billboard Blight always does a good job of shining a light on outdoor advertising's shortcomings and general double talk. This recent post is no different.

VIA Ban Billboard Blight

This billboard on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood is just a stone’s throw from the glitzy intersections of Sunset & Vine and Hollywood & Vine. [MORE]

Application Unlimited In New York

Application Unlimited is another company operating street level vinyl storefront wraps in New York City. I was walking through the subway this morning and saw them installing vinyl ads in the 14th street ACE station which I believe is still operated by CBS outdoor. The image above, taken from their website, shows what they can do.

Cutting Up Advertisements and Rearanging Them is Just Plain Fu

I know this photo is blurry and I don't have imagery of the final product, but trust me this guy was re-working that Adventureland poster with his headphones on. He was completely oblivious to the world around him, and was working like he thought what he was doing was legal. I quickly realized the desire to rearrange the space around you is inherent in many peoples public persona. The fact that subway advertisements are now stickers has made that process incredibly easy and I think the reason for the recent wave of ad reworkings, and of course the work of PosterBoy.