On Monday, Washington DC won a lawsuit against Lumen Eight, the successor company to Don MacCord’s Digi Outdoor Media. Digi Outdoor Media installed 43 digital billboards at 17 locations in Wash DC. The company tried to circumvent Wash DC’s ban on digital billboards by installing the signs inside windows of […]
Greg Redeker is a Real Estate Manager for Stott Outdoor Advertising. Greg spent 20 years working for local government, most of that time as an urban planner. He also served as a zoning administrator and was lead author for a comprehensive sign ordinance update. Greg is writing a series of […]
The Tennessee House Transportation Subcommittee on Infrastructure passed two bills to amend the State’s sign regulations. Both bills are designed to fix Tennessee’s sign regulations which were overturned by the Thomas v Bright court challenge. HB 1071 is legislation prepared by various stakeholders including the out of home advertising industry. HB […]
Tomorrow the Chattanooga city council will vote on an ordinance instituting a 180 day moratorium on accepting and processing permits for new outdoor advertising signs or permits for the conversion of static billboards to digital billboards. The moratorium says that the city’s sign ordinance is modeled in part on the […]
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Tahoe Fund, and the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority bought digital billboard space to fight litter. One billboard message displays the hashtag #NoSledLeftBehind (to encourage locals and visitors to keep trails clean). Another billboard promotes picking up after dogs (“Be #1 at picking up #2). “When […]
By Michael F Wright Ever since Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego (1981), courts have been applying an ultra-lenient version of intermediate scrutiny under Central Hudson Gas & Electric Co. v. Public Service Commission (1980) to content-based regulation of commercial signs. Then in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona […]
A federal judge ruled that regulators “failed to articulate a reasoned basis” for mandating warning labels for premium cigar advertising and packaging. Warnings for premium cigars, which had not gone into effect, were vacated by US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta on February 3, 2020 (Cigar Association of America […]
See the billboard in the picture? It started the Thomas v Bright challenge to Tennessee’s billboard rules. The site is a vacant lot next to I-40 in Memphis Tennessee. William Thomas tried to get a permit for a billboard on the site, was denied because of spacing restrictions and […]
Amortization refers to the practice of forcing a billboard company to remove a billboard after an arbitrary period of time without compensation for the loss. Amortization has reared its ugly head in Wenatchee, Washington. In November the city of Wenatchee sent a letter to the city’s out of home companies […]
Tennessee’s General Assembly has started considering changes to Tennessee’s billboard-control law because federal courts have ruled the law unconstitutional. The motivation to enact a new billboard law is to remedy a pending legal challenge regarding free speech (Thomas v. Bright). Similar constitutional challenges to billboard law arose in Oregon and […]
