Boston iPod Billboard Quietly Removed After Political Questions
9:36 am, November 10th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Credit: Yoon S. Bryun, The Boston Globe
Remember the hoopla over Boston’s giant iPod billboard we reported on back in October? Questions arose whether a mayor’s aide had helped a business group obtain permission to erect the ad, despite the objections of the state’s outdoor advertising board and the mayor’s own historic reluctance for such things? The billboard was quietly removed, replaced by a public service mural.
Key to the decision was the Massachusetts Outdoor Advertising Board “deemed [the billboard] illegal because it advertised a product the storage business didn’t sell,” according to the Boston Herald. The ad was located on the side of a self-storage building that along with packing tape and locks, sold iTunes gift cards.
The billboard’s removal comes less than a half-year after the property owner and others paid $110,000 to obtain a one-year extension on a city permit.
In 2008 Apple opened its flagship Boston store.
[Via Boston Herald and 9to5Mac]
Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article
This is further evidence that the people of Boston do not take interest in their elected officials bumbling idiocy. Boston is the city that is known for electing a heavy-handed, cow-tongued boffoon for a fifth term to office and dumping corporate assets into their harbor as a means of bullying businesses that attempt to trade goods within their city. Boston is a self-absorbed city that is notorious for being short-sighted and biting the hand that feeds them.
I’m willing to make a gentleman’s bet that the real reason behind the removal of the billboard is that someone didn’t get their kickback.
$20 says that if Mayor Menino had gotten his palm greased by the marketing division at Apple, the Billboard wouldn’t be such a hot issue and Menino himself would have held a press conference so the mushmouth could address the controversy and espouse what a great company Apple is for opening a store in their fair city, and that the bylaws should be amended.
Any takers?
Scott, on November 10th, 2009 at 10:06 am