According to USA Today, digital billboards are taking hold in cities across the country, even as sign companies, federal regulators and opponents debate the legal status of the technology that makes them possible.
“When the sun goes down, you can’t ignore it,” Mark Legan says, gesturing from his living room toward the giant television billboard that recently went up a half block away on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“All this illumination comes into the house. My 7-year-old, when she sits at the dining room table, is forced to watch these ads. It’s just not right.”
Of the 450,000 billboards around the country, about 500 are digital, all erected within the past two years or so. Hundreds more are planned to go up later this year and in 2008, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the industry’s Washington lobby group.
