The Billboard Battle:

...Consequently, not more than 65 per cent of the whole NSIDH network would be subject to controls if the Federal requirements were adopted by all the states...

...Not content with limiting their efforts to winning approval for the NSIDH regulations, they try to abolish billboards from all major state roads...

...President Kennedy is seeking a four-year extension of the law, and an increase in participating states' bonuses from one-half of 1 per cent to 1 per cent...

...Yet absentee ballots cast two or three weeks before the election and before the industry's intensive propagandizing told a different story...

...According to Robert Moses, New York City Construction Coordinator, the billboard people "claim that their opponents are only a small group of esthetes, 'garden club gals' and misguided conservationists who object to handsome, educational roadside frescoes...

...The industry further insists that billboards are therapeutic: They can shock drivers out of a nearsomnambulistic state...

...But the outdoor advertisers oppose any form of regulation...

...Zeal, the civic organizations quickly discovered, rarely carries the day in state legislatures...

...Backers of the Initiative Petition, encouraged by early opinion polls, felt confident that the referendum would succeed...

...This view is contrary to the findings of a study made by the Minnesota Department of Highways, but the National Safety Council has nevertheless endorsed it...

...Yet advertising people are aware that their own image needs a bit of refurbishing these days, and they have already taken the first ingratiating step...

...These restrictions are not applicable in municipalities, zoned commercial and industrial areas or to those parts of the interstate system built before July 1, 1956...

...The battle between the industry and its various opponents on the state level is instructive...

...In 1960, state-wide support was aroused and a referendum was suggested...

...They call for the elimination of commercial signs for 660 feet of the right-of-way, except for adjacent businesses which are permitted to advertise themselves within 50 feet of their plant...

...Considering the circumstances, this may be the beginning of a new technique: the invisible sell...

...As a final ploy, usually saved for litigation, the advertising industry stresses the sanctity of free enterprise...

...This group, financed and directed by outdoor advertising companies and advertising agencies, together with the Council of Outdoor Advertising, enlisted the aid of the local Teamsters, the State Hotel Association, restaurant and beverage groups and the Sign and Pictorial Artists Local 428 of the AFL-CIO (the principal union involved...

...The Committee also rejected the threat to tourism by pointing out that information signs would be posted to guide tourists to eating and drinking places near the highways...

...The two leading papers in the State, the Portland Oregoiiian and the Oregon Journal, endorsed the measure, as did a number of prominent organizations, including the AAA, the Oregon Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Oregon Federation of Women's Clubs...

...The Highway Protection Committee spent about $10,000...

...After the billboard interests' leaflet-signboard-radio-TV blitzkrieg, the public voted almost 2-1 against control...

...Such a bill has just passed the Oregon State Legislature and is awaiting the Governor's signature...

...But a few months before the election, the billboard industry inundated voters with fliers, leaflets, throwaways and other handouts from an organization ironically named the Council on Highway Regulation...

...The billboard people have fought this bill shoddily, using falsehoods, scare material and facile deceit of their own, knowingly misrepresenting the facts of their own business as well as the opinions of others," editorialized the Salem, Oregon Capital Journal...

...in their view, billboards simply obstruct the view and substitute "signery for scenery...

...The vote then was almost 2-1 for regulation...

...For over 20 years, various civic organizations urged the State Legislature to pass a billboard control act and failed...

...In its fight against Federal control the advertising industry successfully borrowed a standard ploy from the segregationists...

...The Federal government already pays for 90 per cent of the $40 billion system (95 per cent in land grant states), but even an additional one-half of 1 per cent is a sizable figure considering the large sums involved...

...Actually, civic organizations attempting to control outdoor advertising are usually over-ambitious...

...Pertinent information about road services, hotels and historic spots is listed on directories immediately off the parkway, which are available to businesses within a 12-mile radius for a modest fee...

...Only due process, it contends, not legislative fiat, can appropriate a landlord's rights, wherever his land may be...

...The industry is no doubt pleased with such technological progress, but its real joy stems from the expiration on June 30 of Federal billboard control legislation...

...However, in the heat of the fight the billboard interests did promise to support new legislation enforcing the Federal standards on interstate highways, although not on the remainder of the State roads...

...Advertisers suggest, too, that billboards are in many ways esthetically superior to natural scenery...

...Leaders of the Administration in Washington have indicated disapproval of current advertising mores...

...Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges has turned down an industry request to increase the size of signs of businesses adjacent to interstate highways...

...On the state level it has also argued against Federal interference with great effectiveness...

...It is a victory in which the advertising" industry can take no pride," stated the Oregoiiian...

...they could accomplish their purpose as well if they were suspended from balloons...

...Crying "states' rights," it persuaded Congress to make billboard control local and optional...

...These charges were immediately countered by the Highway Protection Committee, which pointed out that the union involved, whose membership was 125, would incur only a 10 per cent loss in employment— 12.5 men—in a five-year period...

...The two major issues raised by the billboard lobby were the legislation's potential effect on tourism (Oregon's third largest industry) and on employment among affected workers...

...For even though the potentially regulated portion of the network is less than 1 per cent of the total national mileage, the billboard interests estimate that 14-20 per cent of the country's traffic will travel these roads...

...At first, the sides were matched quite unequally: The outdoor advertisers had money, organization and political finesse...

...An Initiative Petition calling for a referendum received more than enough signatures to put it on the November ballot...

...Oregon is an example of the allor-nothing approach...

...And more storm clouds are sure to gather if the President succeeds in extending and improving the Federal billboard legislation...

...According to sworn statements filed with the Oregon Secretary of State, the campaign cost the advertising people $107,967...

...Without signboards, the advertisers argued, tourists might go hungry or thirsty, become sleepy, or, worst of all, drive straight through Oregon to California or Washington...

...The Petition called for compliance with Federal standards for the interstate highway network, plus similar standards for major State thruways...

...One pioneer in this field, Hugh R. Pomeroy, now director of planning in New York's Westchester County, believes that signboards "have no relation to the use of adjacent land other than as a vantage point...

...Not to be outdone, Lockheed Aircraft hopes to use the sodium-vapor trails of descending space vehicles for commercial messages...

...High on the list of novel gimmicks are giant eyewinkers, new quartz lamps, metals that glow, chameleon signs that change colors, polarized lights that move about and a 90-million candlepower "Skyjector" to throw ad messages on clouds, mountains and buildings...

...Nine states have enacted the Federal standards for billboard control, but only Maryland has signed the necessary agreements with the Bureau of Public Roads for bonus money...

...their opponents, citizen groups of conservationists, planners, architects, garden clubs, state granges and the Automobile Association of America (AAA), were comparatively penurious, loosely affiliated, politically innocent, and admirably zealous...

...Although they are learning to fight the billboard lobby through mail campaigns, publicity drives and subtle political pressures, the advertising agencies are still in command...

...In case of nuclear war, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization has been promised full cooperation and publicity: Thousands of huge billboards will be available to carry public instructions after air-raid warnings have sounded...

...But such comprehensive proposals have elicited a negative public reaction in several states...

...Other planners question the legitimacy of outside advertising in general...

...Gerald Krefetz, who wrote about the New York Port Authority in the February 6 NL, is a freelance writer...

...Federal specifications under the 1958 law are hardly severe...

...But highway zoning programs have long been upheld in the courts, and most zoning planners believe that regulating billboards in no way interferes with property rights...

...The present law, passed in 1958, provides bonuses to states which adhere to the optional Federal standards for regulating billboards on the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (NSIDH)— a 41,000-mile nation-wide network of roads authorized by Congress in 1956...

...The State also stood to gain between $500,000-$800,000 from the Federal bonus...