"digitized signage"

The vast majority of the people in the entertainment industry don't know anything about DIGITAL SIGNAGE. I work in Hollywood and meet with people in mainstream entertainment. Yesterday, I had two meetings that illustrate this point. My morning appointment was with a prominent TV writer who writes for the Oscars and most of the variety TV specials on broadcast and cable. He --- like most --- never thought about all those damn screens he sees everywhere as a new avenue for "targeted entertainment," that people have to program those screens like ANY network and that advertisers have to get their messages out there and that OOH is a natural avenue for them, and that --- like TV in the 50's --- CONTENT ultimately will drive the marketplace. He immediately saw the frontier.

My afternoon meeting was with a casting director who has done movies and TV for the last 15 years. She too had never considered the various flat screens popping up at her bank and florist and coffee shop and pet store as a bonefide vehicle for broadcast-quality media. She said "all I see is powerpoint and bad production value and news, news, news...maybe some weather." Exactly. She immediately saw the future.

Being at the epicenter of ENTERTAINMENT and coming from a pedigree that can be traced back to the very beginning of television gives BCP a huge advantage in this burgeoning industry. We are walking in the right direction and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said (paraphrasing) sometimes that is as important as where you stand.

We are certainly not there yet. Advertisers are skittish. Research is spotty. Standard practices are non-existent. People are in a huge chicken-or-egg battle over how to start (do I build out or sell advertising? Wellllll, can't do one without the other and can't do the other without having the one...). And the old guard in this industry (people I respect greatly and in whose debt we all owe our present open field running...innovative technology and forward-thinking leaders like Gerba and Haynes and Gorrie and these companies out carrying the canary....thank you thank you thank you...) are attached nonetheless to the "known."

Think about it: the possibilities are unlimited. It is a revolution out there. Here in Hollywood, the writing has been on the wall since the proliferation of CABLE CHANNELS. Fewer and fewer big numbers; more and more niche audiences.

With digital technology creating the highway and the possibility of out-of-home Networks, we can go anywhere. Possibilities are unlimited. Those that say we need to stop and establish what works and duplicate that fail to realize that at this point in the industry, by the time you duplicate success, the ball is somewhere else. And so is the audience.

We must keep trying new things. New ideas. Stay fluid. In the flow. We must. Otherwise we do not innovate. We do not break through the morass of obstacles we all face.

Onward!