Bus shelter battle heads to Jacksonville City Council

[Seraphs]

You know what I hate?  When some of these overzealous individuals make a tacky poster and tack it up on the post on my corner.  I go out immediately and snatch it down.  If it's a yard sale or something I can deal with it for the weekend.  As we all know there is a right way and a wrong way to do anything.

Bus shelters are needed, big deal if they have a professional sign that is tasteful and appropriate for the area they are in.  I cannot believe the amount of dialogue dedicated to this subject.

[stjr]

... big deal if they have a professional sign that is tasteful and appropriate for the area they are in.  

"Tasteful and appropriate"?  I guess you figure they will be coming to you for your determination of this?  And, you will be the decider for all the rest of us?  Or, are you OK with delegating this to a stranger who you have no assurance will share your standards?  Worse, there is no decider and everything pretty much goes including that "unprofessional" poster you don't like but which can't be legally distinguished from the "professional" one you approve of.  Good luck.

[thelakelander]

stjr, I actually like some of the images you posted, especially in an urban setting like downtown.  I like a lot of the electronic billboards and would not mind a couple of LED screens hanging on a few buildings and blank walls down there.  Imo, they'd add a little life and light to what can be a dreary and dead atmosphere at times.  I'm probably the wrong guy to debate in this particular case.  What we consider tasteful and appropriate for signage may be completely opposite.

[stjr]

stjr, I actually like some of the images you posted, especially in an urban setting like downtown.  I like a lot of the electronic billboards and would not mind a couple of LED screens hanging on a few buildings and blank walls down there.  Imo, they'd add a little life and light to what can be a dreary and dead atmosphere at times.  I'm probably the wrong guy to debate in this particular case.  What we consider tasteful and appropriate for signage may be completely opposite.

Lake, I have to assume the one you truly like is Times Square.  That's a special place along with Las Vegas where I would agree the signs are part of the atmosphere.

I personally think billboards along roadsides are unnatural and grotesque oversized monstrosities that detract from and degrade most any environment.  I agree with you that electronic signs are generally more tasteful in most forms although the billboard ones I have seen are still billboards with all their objections in my mind.

Most everything after that is a matter of degree.  If I really thought the powers that be could stay above the political fray and follow a disciplined enforcement program based on strict standards of "decency", I would be supportive of signs as you advocate in the downtown or like commercial areas.  I just have NEVER seen the Jax community be successful at such a plan with respect to any venture and I don't see any reason to think it would change now.

It really goes back to my response to Seraph which is:  Who is the arbiter of "tasteful and appropriate"?. 

I expect if the sign ordinance gets legally pried open again, there will be the usual return of abusive practices ultimately  leading to "NIMBY" ("Not in My BackYard") and the likely repeat of our past history.  I will be there to tell you "I told you so".

[CS Foltz]

stjr..........I agree with your viewpoint! This will open a can of worms down the road to no good for the City's citizens.................I already informed my Representative but I think he is in the "All for it" group! I will remember this come voting time!

[stjr]

stjr..........I agree with your viewpoint! This will open a can of worms down the road to no good for the City's citizens.................I already informed my Representative but I think he is in the "All for it" group! I will remember this come voting time!

CS, the out-of-control horrors that spring to mind already:  zoning, land use, road building, mass transit, fiscal responsibility, contract negotiations, historic preservation, education....  How many of these are well managed to the satisfaction of the greater community?

And, now, we want to entrust the same "bought and sold" politicians with sign standards that, once before, were so out of control by these same officials, that it is one of only a handful of issues in our community that saw a populist-based uprising lead to restrictive changes?

[CS Foltz]

stephendare.............I gotta ask........how do you come to the conclusion this is all for the public good?

[CS Foltz]

stjr.........all of that and a few other things! I think that we need to start over with our representatives and get some in there that have not been to the darkside and have maybe a smidgen of common sense. Mayor is a lost cause and the only thing that will fix him is to leave when his term is up! Run the City like a business my rectal vent! Council members as rapidly as possible and expand from there!

[CS Foltz]

OK that makes sense! I think your original train of thought was the correct one though! I understand the lack of shelters and bus seats but Advertising should not be required to fund either one. This is something that JTA should be cognizant of and should be part of their budget funding! This is not Times Square and we don't need wall to wall signage..............especially from a company based in Charlotte NC!

[thelakelander]

This is not Times Square and we don't need wall to wall signage

Good or bad, we'll never be Times Square just like Jax Beach will never be a South Beach or Daytona, height limit or not.  However, a lot of signage that has been banned in this city is a part of our urban historical heritage.  Extremes can be bad on both sides.

[stjr]

Lake, like everything else in our society, advertising and signage has gone EXTREME.  Your pictures from the past are nice but don't represent what will come today.

We live in an era where athletes and performers wear advertising on their clothes.  TV shows and movies feature ads IN the programs, not just during commercial breaks.  News is no longer as much news, as it is advertorials.  Ads are digitally dropped into stadiums and playing fields and serve as backgrounds for news conferences.  Everything today has sponsors running ads, from sporting events to public broadcasting.  All charitable events have sponsors.  We have fast food and soft drink companies advertising and promoting in our schools and colleges.  Ads are now on the front page of the newspaper, even the Wall Street Journal and NY Times.  The President of the U.S. gets asked to endorse the new Conan O'Brien show during a network interview.  Ads grace the walls of almost any unregulated surface around.  Probably a third of TV time is commercials, even cable TV which was mostly ad free at one time since you paid for it versus free TV.  You can't visit most web sites without a pop up ad of some sort.  Our clothing has ads on it.  People now "tattoo" ads on their bodies for money.

The fact is, today, in unregulated free enterprise, everything is for sale until people finally get sick and tired of it and revolt.  That is how we got our sign ordinance.  Your sign examples of the past, like the buildings in the picture, have one common thread:  Jax leaders don't have the vision or fortitude to preserve either one.  We had our chance to live reasonably and abused it.  There is no reason to think things would be anything but worse this time around.

As stated, there are other ways to fund bus shelters.  JTA needs to be creative and change its transit priorities, not cop out and take the lazy way out at the expense of our community.

[thelakelander]

Personally, I'm fine with advertising and signage for the most part.  I rather see them than the tacky buildings and sprawl that line our suburban landscape.  I also agree with going into a deal to get these things free from the private sector in turn for advertising priviledges.  This is something that is really critical to the development of a good reliable transit system.  Private shelters also tend to look better and are maintained better than public shelters.

Nevertheless, I do understand the concern with the existing sign ordinance, which I do believe is too restrictive to begin with.  However, I am open to additional ways to fund this, as a long as we can get just as many shelters without paying one red cent more than the deal the council will be voting on later today.   Imo, any other cash JTA has laying around should go to implementing streetcars or commuter rail, not bus shelters.

My guess is they don't really exist or else they would have been fully exposed and promoted over the last couple of years of this debate by sign ordinance supporters.  If that had happened, perhaps another route could have been taken years ago and there would be no debate today. 

[stjr]

Lake, make me chair of JTA.   

I will fund the bus shelters, street cars, commuter rail, and better bus service using the same number of dollars produced by the federal, state, and city grants, programs, and funding JTA uses now.  I won't need any more taxes from the local taxpayers.  But, I will cancel the $ky-high-way and fight the feds and state to reallocate new road dollars to the new priorities.  I dare them to tell me that I can't use road money for mass transit if that is what we think is best!   

Like the Men's Warehouse says, you are going to like the way WE look, I guarantee it!

[CS Foltz]

Well stjr at least you would have a plan and a vision which is more than the current Administration does. I think there should be a way to fund something as simple as a bus stop shelter without having to resort to advertising to get it installed and maintained! I mean JTA is busy procuring new bus's right? Hold on buying just one and use that money to build......I mean the only thing that I have seen from JTA is an obsession with concrete and no long range plan for much of anything other than more concrete and more bus's! I see no thinking outside of the box  just the same old mantra time and time again!

[stjr]

Like ads?  More coming your way soon.  Lucky us, we are the test case.

Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) has picked Jacksonville for a small-scale deployment of a system that allows the MSO to dynamically insert advertisements into video-on-demand (VoD) content in near real time.

This is a breakthrough, as such advertising spots typically have to be added to the video content in advance, a situation that historically has hindered the growth of cable VoD advertising.

For this initial deployment, a first for the MSO, Comcast is using an advanced advertising system and campaign manager from BlackArrow Inc. , in which Comcast Interactive Capital is an investor. BlackArrow's system has been integrated with Comcast's video infrastructure, sourced from Tandberg Television and Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT). (See Comcast, BlackArrow Team on VoD Ads .)

BlackArrow's system acts as a decision engine that communicates with the underlying VoD system to insert the appropriate advert into the video stream based on predetermined rules. Meanwhile, a complementary Web-based element from BlackArrow distributes and sells the ad space based on available inventory.

Early on, Comcast is inserting traditional 15- and 30-second (and a new class of 20-second) promotional adverts that highlight shows and movies available on two MSO-owned programmers: PBS Kids Sprout and FearNET.

Indicating that this is something of a test run to try out BlackArrow's dynamic ad-insertion technology under commercial service conditions, paying advertisers are not currently involved, though they certainly could be added to the mix later.

The installation is emerging as Comcast and other MSOs grow eager to employ dynamic ad insertion systems that will help to pay the costs of "free," ad-supported video-on-demand titles and provide some parity with the types of reporting and measurement features that advertisers have grown accustomed to with the Internet. (See Plugging the Ad Drain.)

In the case of Comcast and its "Project Infinity" initiative, the MSO reportedly anticipates offering more than 100,000 titles on-demand, with much of that content inventory to be ad-supported variety. (See Comcast Launches 'Project Infinity'.)

BlackArrow, meanwhile, estimates -- using a mix of data from The Nielsen Co. , Comcast, and comScore Inc. -- that on-demand will represent 13.2 percent of TV viewing by 2010, up from 7.6 percent in 2008. The company also expects 22 percent of all prime time viewing to be on-demand by 2010.

So the trends are there. But the nagging problem faced by MSOs, as well as their programmers and advertisers, is the unwieldy amount of time it takes to prepare advertising content to run within a cable VoD title.

Historically, advertisers must buy a VoD ad placement 45 to 90 days in advance. And once they're there, they can't be removed or switched to another slot for about 28 days, says Nick Troiano, president of BlackArrow. "Such lead times... are why advertisers have not embraced VoD ads," he says.

By adding the ability to insert those ads digitally rather than way in advance, that lead time can be shortened to "near real time" so long as the advert in question is already stored in the cable headend, Troiano claims.

BlackArrow is hopeful that the Jacksonville deployment is just the start. It claims its ad platform can help operators and programmers deliver ads dynamically not just to cable VoD, but to DVRs (set-top and network-based), and to video served over broadband and to mobile devices. Comcast likely will be looking for ways to serve ads to On Demand Online, the MSO's broadband-fueled "TV Everywhere" service that will be offered to customers as a free adjunct to their pay-TV subscriptions. (See Comcast Nears 'TV Everywhere' Launch.)

"Comcast went out with its own content, but that's not where it ends. That's where it starts," says Troiano.

A Comcast spokeswoman says the MSO expects to introduce VoD ad-insertion capabilities in more markets and to additional networks, but isn't ready to announce a rollout schedule.

No addressability... yet
The Jacksonville ad-insertion rollout won't support more targeted "addressable" advertisements that are delivered using demographic information -- at least not yet.

Comcast Spotlight, the local ad arm of Comcast, is presently testing such a system in Baltimore, however. (See Comcast Bulks for Baltimore Ad Trial .)

"This [deployment] is a first real-world example by Comcast to... solve the on-demand advertising problem," says BlackArrow CEO Dean Denhart.

And it's also BlackArrow's first announced cable deployment, though it's got others underway that haven't been announced yet. BlackArrow has also completed integrations with video servers from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and with Arris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS)'s video servers and VoD backoffice systems. BlackArrow has yet to announce anything with SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC), one of Comcast's other major VoD technology partners.

Comcast's effort in Jacksonville also represents the latest high-profile use of dynamic VoD ad-insertion. Among more recent activity, Charter Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: CHTR) and Sunflower Broadband have also tried out systems with other vendor partners. (See Charter Tests Dynamic VOD Ads.)

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=182985&site=cdn&f_src=lightreading_gnews