Wanted: billboard counters
How many of the eyesores are there in L.A.? Absurdly, that number's a secret.
Do me a favor on your way to work today, or when you head home tonight. Be on the lookout for billboards.
You can't miss 'em. There are about 6,000 in the city of L.A. Or maybe there are 10,000. Or 3,000.
Why don't I know? Because of something else that's too huge to miss: the brass-plated nerve of the billboard industry.
Any time any city has tried to limit and control this "litter on sticks," the billboard industry has frothed and fought, and frequently lost. Now, six years after L.A. ordered an inventory of all the billboards in the city limits in an attempt to find the illegal ones and regulate the rest, the billboard companies are having another well-lawyered hissy-fit. They say the city can't assemble or reveal such a list because the location, size and ownership of the billboards is proprietary info -- a trade secret.
Coca-Cola's "Ingredient X" is a trade secret. The Colonel's blend of 11 herbs and spices is a trade secret. A billboard is not a trade secret.
As Councilman Jack Weiss, who's been trying for years to chop the sight-blight down to size, told me, "It's something for George Carlin's list of oxymorons: secret billboards."
The claim is such an absurd insult to Los Angeles that the companies might just get away with it. That's because of another thing that isn't a secret: How, over the years, the billboard biz has played L.A. and other cities like a cheap violoncello. If Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor -- the billboard giants here -- are pushing to get away with this claptrap, it's because they think L.A. has all the backbone of cooked linguine.
They may be right. Los Angeles has been trying to get a grip on billboards since -- I kid you not -- 1899. A headline in The Times on Oct. 3, 1899, was "Billboards to be regulated." And the sign industry's leader, Gaylord Wilshire -- yes, that Wilshire -- threatened to take the city to court: "The council has to play to the galleries ... and we never pay any attention to them. We expect to oppose this ordinance ... and we are confident of winning."
The 2008 chapter of this century-old tale launched when the LA Weekly asked the Department of Building and Safety for the location list of Clear Channel's and CBS' billboards. A rather feeble 2006 City Council deal "regulating" LED billboards declared that the vital details about billboards must be available to the public.
