The Queque swears on our stack of Gore Vidal novels that we were done with the Clear Channel digital-billboard story [see “Hang ’em high (and fast), August 27, 2008] — at least while we finished filing and waiting on open-records requests at the state and federal level (because we’re struck practically dumb with admiration at the way our local media juggernaut stormed the fed-state-local regs in one Sherman-esque march to the “see”). But a little vanguard doc showed up late last week, a sort of scouting party, we assume, for an army of interesting info to follow.
So let us pause a moment to tip our hat to Clear Channel VP Tim Anderson, who is either missing the irony gene or was having a good chuckle the day he confirmed to us that Clear Channel Outdoor Prez Blake Custer used to work for City Manager Sheryl Sculley way back in Phoenix, but never mentioned that the time lapse between his tenure at TxDOT — in the Right of Way division, no less — and a job at that same Clear Channel, was infinitesimal by comparison. By which we mean “negligible.” (True, we didn’t ask; Queque’s imagination sometimes fails us in the infamy department & a September '07 E-N story buried that nugget.)
That’s the same TxDOT that obligingly changed its rules to allow digital signage on federally funded Texas highways not five months after the Federal Highway Administration said digital signs don’t necessarily violate state-fed agreements under the Highway Beautification Act — and not two years after TxDOTs former Tim Anderson, Esq., wrote the FHWA inquiring about just that topic.
