Are Digital Billboards Scarring the Los Angeles Skyline?

Host:

Jim Sterngold

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In a city given over to the automobile, billboards have been a fixture here for decades. Some have even become Los Angeles icons: think of the giant Angelyne ad or the Marlboro Man on the Sunset Strip. But now there’s a new generation of huge illuminated billboards throwing blasts of digital light into homes and neighborhoods. Have these digital signs become a blight on the city? Can the city stop them?

Jim Sterngold guest hosts.

Two years ago the Los Angeles city attorney signed a truce with billboard companies in the battle over the spread of their signs. The companies agreed to remove some of their big signs but in return they got permission to put up nearly 900 powerful new digitally illuminated billboards. Some neighborhoods are fighting back against what they call eyesores and safety hazards. City officials have reversed course and now say they want a halt, but can they force the advertising companies to pull them down?

Guests:

Vince Gonzales: Correspondent for SoCal Connected, a weekly television program on public television station KCET, @kcet
Eric Garcetti: President of the Los Angeles City Council, @ericgarcetti
Dennis Hathaway: Spokesman for the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight
Katherine Mangu-Ward: Columnist and Associate Editor at Reason magazine, Reason.com

Underwriters

Which Way L.A.? is made possible in part by the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, which supports study and research into policy issues of the Los Angeles region.

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