BORED WITH BOARDS

Last year a ‘visionary’ Melbourne City Councillor came up with the whacky idea to ban advertisements on bus and tram shelters in certain parts of the city.

Forget the fact that those shelters were clean, modern –paid for by the outdoor advertising company – and often located where no council shelter existed before.

They were apparently a blight on the CBD and places like St. Kilda Rd. Ignore the fact that things called trams had become advertisements on wheels. She had no answer to that.

Now, they have struck again. There’s a new City Council plan to ban billboards in the city except for the Bourke Street Mall. I guess they want to make it a poor man’s version of Times Square or Piccadilly Circus. Can you imagine the loss of revenue to advertising businesses, to creative designers, and to building owners who lease the space?

Personally, there are some billboards and moving electronic messages that I don’t like. I’ll sound like a prude but the huge FCUK billboard as you enter the city is legal but it offends me. And the Seven Network’s moving display on top of Young & Jackson’s Hotel. But for a different reason. I went to the launch party for that promo for Seven News. It was going to be a continuous electronic news service. Didn’t last long. Now it is merely a commercial for Seven’s programmes and personalities.

Councillor Fraser Brindley, who is pushing the idea, says ‘you stand there with St. Paul’s, Federation Square and Flinders Street, then whack, a huge billboard on top of Young & Jackson’s. How something on top of the pub obscures St Paul’s is beyond me. If anything it adds a touch of colour to one of the grottiest main streets in Melbourne. And if anything detracts from St. Paul’s it is Federation Square which – by stealth—is now covered with signage. And to think I complained when the small SBS sign first went up.

Now they want to ban billboards on St. Kilda Rd, King’s Way, Swan Street, Victoria Parade among others. No wonder so many applications are approved by VCAT after being rejected by the council.

And in this cleanup campaign do they plan to get rid of the Welcome to Victoria and Welcome to Melbourne signs that distract you on the road to and from the airport? And how about those ghastly bits of bunting and flags the council puts up at your expense?

Next it will be shop signs. They’ll want us all to go back to genteel little brass plates on the door saying ‘clothing for gentlemen of distinction’ and
‘fine millinery for ladies’.


Wednesday, January 31, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007