Digital Billboards: This Time More Means Less. Background Technology has changed the global face of business from an industrial economy, paper-dominated process model, to a digital model rich in real-time information. These advances have created and cannibalized many types of industries and businesses. The obsession with accurate and timely information continues to fuel the technological revolution. For example, the cell phone nearly drove the pay phone to extinction. In 1998 there were 2.6 million public telephones in use, today there are less than one million. The commercial-free appeal of satellite radio along with iPods continues to diminish traditional radio's captive audience. E-businesses like Amazon and I-tunes have devastated traditional music and book stores. Internet search companies continue to drain advertising revenue from the newspaper industry, and DVRs and TiVO allow consumers to ignore endless commercials. The fight for real-time information and consumer attention has caused major shifts in advertising spending and is now revolutionizing an unlikely medium, the billboard. The next big battle for survival may be for out-of-home media. The formal definition of the alternative media out-of-home (AOOH) industry includes “advertising vehicles developed or updated within the past decade through new technologies and methods in an effort to address a more mobile and constrained demographic in less crowded locations outside the home.” The lion's share of this growing industry goes to Digital Billboards (DBB). There are 410,000 static or traditional billboards and 400 digital billboards in the United States, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Inc, and it is predicted that the number of DBBs could rise to 4,000 within 10 years. Based on the examples above, as the DBB market matures and economies of scale evolve, static billboards will become less profitable and less attractive to the industry. Opportunities will arise for advertisers, businesses and communities to negotiate and design a more streamlined, environmentally friendly billboard network that enhances our natural landscape and improves public safety. Opposition Most opposition groups raise two main points, visual pollution and driver safety. First, the debate began in 1965 when the Highway Beautification Act was passed, which limited the number of new billboards. Over the past four decades, billboard companies have threatened lawsuits over hostile ordinances and bribed civic organizations with free space on billboards advertising upcoming community events. In the late 1990s, numerous polls were conducted to demonstrate mass disapproval in the country: by a 10-to-1 margin, Floridians favor reducing the number of billboards; 81% of Houston, Texas residents support existing ordinance banning construction of new billboards; 9 out of 10 Michigan residents believe the state has too many billboards.