Milwaukee expected to OK Billboards- May 2006

Highway signs could go high-tech; Doyle expected to OK billboard

Electronic billboards resembling giant high-definition TV screens would be allowed under state law for the first time in Wisconsin along the interstate and state highway systems under legislation expected to be signed soon by Gov. Jim Doyle.
Environmental advocates have urged Doyle to veto the bill, arguing that the large electronic signs, with pictures and messages that could be programmed to change as often as every six seconds, would mar the landscape, cause light pollution and be so distracting to drivers they'd be traffic safety hazards.
"We think it's intrusive on the landscape and distracting from a safety perspective," said Lisa MacKinnon, policy director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, an environmental and land-use planning advocacy group.

"Plus, it's the outdoor equivalent of telemarketing: You don't get any choice in the matter."
But officials of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Wisconsin, which lobbied in favor of the bill, say the measure would allow them to market the latest technological advances in their industry. They note that changeable electronic billboards along highways have not proved to be safety problems in other states and believe much of opponents' stance against the bill is rooted in a broader issue.
"It sounds to me like they just don't like billboards," said Dan Pomeroy, real estate and public affairs manager for Pewaukee-based advertising company Clear Channel Outdoor and president of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Wisconsin.
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Matthew Canter, a spokesman for Doyle, said the governor is expected to sign the bill.
Only one such changeable electronic billboard now exists along a highway in Wisconsin. The billboard advertising Potawatomi Bingo Casino, with a changing LED display to publicize events and promotions near the Marquette Interchange, was permitted by the state Department of Transportation years ago even though it does not meet state law.
The DOT's own message boards installed over the traffic lanes at various locations along the interstate system in the Milwaukee area also utilize this LED technology.
But the new electronic highway advertising signs that would be permitted under the bill, given final legislative approval last month, are expected to be much more sophisticated and high-tech, resembling the flashy, full-color displays outside Miller Park, State Fair Park and the Bradley Center. Those displays are permitted under current state law because they are classified as "on- premises" business signs, not highway signs.
No moving pictures
The difference between those signs and the new electronic highway billboards is that the highway signs would be prohibited from displaying moving pictures, such as video images, or scrolling or segmented messages. But the entire image would be allowed to change as frequently as every six seconds, with the change of images required to be accomplished in one second or less.
The electronic billboards most likely would be 672 square feet in size, the size of most non-electronic billboards today, and be primarily in urban areas, said Janet Swandby, executive director and lobbyist for the Outdoor Advertising Association of Wisconsin.
She said the image quality of the electronic billboards, which cost about $500,000 each, would be very good but that they would look very much like today's non-electronic billboards, only with pictures and messages that change electronically.
"It truly is like high-definition TV quality," she said of the electronic billboards.
"They look no different from any (highway) billboard you see in Wisconsin today, but they change within a second to another billboard that looks just like one you see today."
Swandby said electronic billboards emit no more light, and possibly less, than current billboards lighted by floodlights at night. She also said outdoor advertising companies in Wisconsin are expected to follow industry practice in other states that allow electronic billboards and agree to use them to notify motorists of traffic and weather emergencies and Amber alerts employed after reported child kidnappings.
Opponents of the high-tech billboards remain distressed at the thought of glowing, constantly changing signs lining Wisconsin highways.
"We've already destroyed the visual aesthetic of Wisconsin with billboards," said Allen Stasiewski, vice president of the Waukesha Environmental Action League.
"Now we're going to allow them to be lit and flashing at us."