TV, Advertising and Buses

Safety Neal's post from Friday about the 10th Annual TV-Turnoff Week seemed to coincide wonderfully with a mention in the Chicago Reader this week about buses in suburban Chicago being outfitted with televisions. In a test program, two Pace buses have been equipped with three 15" monitors each, airing "informational programming to make transit riding more enjoyable." Of course advertising will be have a large amount of "airtime" in order to pay for the costs of buying, installing and maintaining the monitors. If successful the televisions will be installed in an additional 387 buses.

This move is reminiscent of other recent installations, primarily in elevators and cabs throughout Chicago, indicating that television is infiltrating every part of our lives, outside of work and sleep, though even those can co-exist with television's presence. Also, it seems to indicate that people are so busy that they need to catch the news, weather and sports while riding a cab to and from a meeting, or riding up to their offices. Regardless of the reasons for their presence in these locations - most likely due to advertising's willingness to find additional ways and places to influence us and the willingness of people to make money from this - the addition of televisions in buses seems as unnecessary as elevators and cabs, at least in my mind.

Continuing with the premise that advertising is driving these decisions, print ads have popped up in many Chicago neighborhoods where none existed before. Instead of in the form of billboards or banners hung from street lights, they're part of the new bus stops littered about the city. French outdoor advertising company J.C. Decaux won a bid to outfit the city with more than 2,000 bus shelters, designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern. Decaux's success in securing the contract in Chicago - and many other cities including Los Angeles and Vancouver - is due to its methods: install the shelters free of charge in exchange for advertising space on each. Once again advertisers are finding a way to increase their exposure and subsequently influence our spending choices, unfortunately at the expense of residential neighborhoods once free from advertising's presence.


A bus shelter two blocks from my apartment

My negative attitude towards the bus shelters would be different if the advertising was for local businesses, which it sometimes - though rarely - is, most likely due to high advertising rates. Instead we are subjected to ads for the latest prescription drugs or television programs, bringing right back around to television and its growing presence and negative effects (pdf link) on people.