Outdoor Advertising

As president of Southern California's largest bus shelter company, Jean Claude LeRoyer knows about manufacturing and advertising. He also has learned a little about censorship. After some recent complaints, LeRoyer decided to pull the plug on a series of bus shelter ads for a rock music radio station in several Orange County cities. The ads depicted a "flasher" in a raincoat confronting an elderly woman. "We're in an awkward position," said LeRoyer, who heads Bustop Shelters of California.

A pair of new Los Angeles skyscrapers could dramatically alter the lights of downtown, reigniting the city's long-running fight over outdoor advertising. If developers of the proposed billion-dollar Wilshire Grand project have their way, such colorful images as stars, butterflies and waterfalls would fade in and out along the upper floors of both their planned 45-story hotel and their 65-floor office tower, thanks to thousands of tiny lights embedded in the buildings' surface. Both skyscrapers would see their lowest 10 floors emblazoned with an array of commercial images, from flashing digital signs to streaming "news ribbons.

These days, you'd have to be pretty daring--or pretty dumb--to put your home at risk to open an ad agency in Los Angeles. But that's what Cary Sacks and John Fuller did. Even as business in the Los Angeles ad market hit the skids nine months ago, the two daredevils left the local office of Della Femina McNamee and took out fat home equity loans to open Sacks/Fuller Advertising. "We knew we couldn't goof up," said John Fuller, the agency president.

Spray paint your name on a freeway underpass and, if you're caught, you'll get fined up to $10,000 and maybe jailed. And you should be. Vandalism is a crime that can undermine communities by turning them into graffiti-ridden dumps. But erect an illegal billboard near the same freeway — or alter a legal sign by turning it around or enlarging it, for example — and you're protected, rather than punished, by state law. Your sign, and your contempt for the law in erecting or altering it, can be as damaging to neighborhood livability as any graffiti, but current law dictates that you can't be fined or otherwise punished for your act. At most, the owners of signs illegally placed near interstate highways and other roads that are part of the federal network can be asked to "cure" their illegal acts.

Thanks to the San Fernando Swap Meet, pilot Jerry Hider will have his first job today since the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults. "I'm back with my banners," said Hider, who flies long, plastic strips promoting Sony PlayStation, shrimp specials, adult entertainment Web sites and other messages in the skies above Southern California's beaches, stadiums and residences. "Well," he said, pausing, "at least I'm back in the San Fernando Valley."

Re "Billboard Sleight of Hand," editorial, Jan. 30: Why do we need billboards at all? Other forms of advertising support the medium they use: newspapers, radio, TV. The billboard companies don't support our roads and freeways. We, the taxpayers, pay the entire expense of those. There's no need to discuss their size or number. Our City Council and Board of Supervisors can just eliminate them. WAUGH SMITH Los Angeles Anyone in L.A. who thinks that giant billboards are a good idea should visit the interchange of the 10 and the 215 freeways near San Bernardino, where huge billboards have all but obliterated what used to be spectacular views of the mountains.

Ever see Marvin Braude dance? I have. He looks just as ridiculous as he does in that photo of him with the article on signs (March 19). But everything he's been screaming about for over 15 years--visual pollution and that demon outdoor advertising--is hardly visible among the overwhelming amount of on-site signs on Ventura Boulevard. A careful examination of the photo of the street reveals two off-site outdoor advertisements: one for that devilish division of General Motors, Chevrolet, the other for Marlboro.

CBS Corp. reported a higher-than-expected 8% rise in quarterly profit Thursday, as strength in its publishing and outdoor advertising businesses overcame a depressed radio division. CBS, which runs the most-watched U.S. TV network, also said it was prepared for a strike by script writers and had programs ready for substitution. The company has been selling assets, including radio stations and TV stations, as it tries to shed lower-margin properties.

A 17 1/2-foot-long cylinder of aluminum, foam and fiberglass rotates as up to 4,400 dots of paint a second are being shot onto a vinyl canvas. As the big metal drum goes around, a huge painting--a 14-by-48-foot mural of a panoramic mountain scene--slowly emerges. In 6 hours and 15 minutes, the work is complete. It is a billboard in the making.

Gannett Co. plans to launch a national billboard network next week aimed at making it easier for advertisers to implement national campaigns through the Rochester, N.Y.-based communications company. But even before Gannett's Outdoor Network USA officially begins on Sept. 9, several firms that specialize in buying outdoor-advertising space are attacking the concept.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich's campaign against towering supergraphics has yielded several victories in sign-saturated Hollywood, with eight of the oversize images coming down in three weeks -- a major break from the stalemate of previous years. Prosecutors announced Friday that two of Hollywood's tallest and most controversial images, standing at an estimated 11 stories near Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, were being removed after the billboard company received a cease-and-desist letter.

A company that has installed multistory supergraphics throughout Los Angeles said Thursday it is willing to pay $12.5 million to save an expanse of the Hollywood Hills -- but only if the city agrees to settle a lawsuit over its existing signs. Beverly Hills-based SkyTag, which has been locked in a legal fight with Los Angeles officials over signs in Westwood, Koreatown and elsewhere, said it would provide the money to preserve 138 acres near the Hollywood sign if the city allowed its contested supergraphics to become permanent.

Workers have removed five supergraphics from a pair of buildings on Hollywood Boulevard that are at the center of the latest criminal sign case filed by City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. A judge issued arrest warrants Tuesday for four people accused by Trutanich of putting up five illegal signs at 6800 Hollywood Blvd. and 6810-6820 Hollywood Blvd. The city's sign law bans the installation of new supergraphics, or vinyl images draped across the side of a building. Deputy City Atty.

Folks who complain about how fast the world is changing might take comfort from a report that appeared in The Times 110 years ago. "Monstrous billboards . . . vaunt the rival virtues of patent medicines, tobacco, shaving soap and girls' legs," the newspaper declared, "despite the attempts of the City Council to eradicate the nuisance." Yes, outdoor signage was controversial back then too. Some residents of Lordsburg (now La Verne) tore down two billboards they considered unsightly.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich intensified his crackdown on illegal billboards, securing arrest warrants against four people accused of putting up supergraphics without permits, according to court records reviewed by The Times on Wednesday. Prosecutors declined to discuss the case, but the arrest warrants accuse the four defendants of misdemeanor counts of violating the city's municipal code, including a ban on the installation of new supergraphics. An attorney for one of the men disputed the charges and said his client would fight the accusations.

After spending three days in jail, a Pacific Palisades businessman agreed Monday to take down an eight-story supergraphic advertisement that had been wrapped around a prominent Hollywood office building just in time to be captured by cameras at next Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony down the street. The legal agreement, crafted by Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich just as building owner Kayvan Setareh was scheduled to be arraigned in court, drew praise from City Council members, who said they had been looking for stronger action on illegal supergraphics.

Motorists across Orange County are witnessing an offbeat religious outreach in the form of billboards and bus-shelter posters bearing messages from God. The aim of what's called the God Speaks campaign is to get people to return to religious values--or at least think about them when they're caught in traffic. "Keep using my name in vain, I'll make rush hour longer," reads one of the billboards, all of which are simply signed "God."

Blake and Steve Pollack love traffic jams. When there's traffic, people can't help but stare at the advertisements that the Pollacks mount on the sides and backs of big-rigs. The trucks slog up and down Southern California freeways in the mornings, when the traffic is bad, and travel over surface streets during the day, making more traffic as they try to navigate sharp right turns and hills.

In a dramatic escalation of the war against illegal supergraphics in Los Angeles, authorities have jailed a businessman accused of posting an eight-story movie advertisement on an office building at one of Hollywood's busiest intersections. Kayvan Setareh, 49, of Pacific Palisades was arrested at his home Friday night and ordered held on $1-million bail. An arrest warrant obtained by Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich accuses Setareh of three misdemeanor city code violations, two of them related to the city sign law, according to William Carter, Trutanich's chief deputy.