Buyways by Catherine Gudis, 2004, Excerpts
The 1912 antitrust case served as an important marker in the history of the industry, not so much marking its limitations but rather its unstoppable consolidation. The General Outdoor Advertising Company [a consolidation of approximately 140 companies] colluded with the National Outdoor Advertising Bureau [NAOB], a group of advertising agencies, which gave more than 90 percent of its business to General.
By the mid-1920s, many of the smaller billposting firms were already subsumed by larger companies. In 1924, the West Coast firm of Foster and Kleiser was forced to fight an antitrust suit. In 1925, Foster and Kleiser agreed to sit on General’s board of directors, and also accepted fifty thousand share of General for Foster and Kleiser Investment Company. The companies also agreed that Foster and Kleiser would limit its operations to the region west of the
If the outdoor advertising industry had consolidated itself in the 1920s and 1930s, by the 1950s and 1960s it had become a devastatingly effective lobbying machine. A reform sympathizer explained that “this lobby shrewdly puts many legislators in its debt by giving them free sign space during election time, and it is savage against the legislator who dares opposes it. It subsidizes his opposition, foments political trouble in his home district, donates sign space to his opponents and sends agents to spread rumors among his constituents.”
The banner year of 1996-1997, in which Clear Channel Communications bought Eller Media for a whopping $1.15 billion. Three billboard companies – Outdoor Systems, Lamar Advertising, and Universal Outdoor – went public, making their CEOs multimillionaires. Outdoor Systems rose from the seventh largest outdoor company to number one by purchasing the outdoor division of media megalith Gannett, itself four times larger than the original Outdoor. Outdoor Systems stock quickly rose 1,460 percent, putting it among the top public offerings of the late 1990s. In 1999, Outdoor Systems was bought by Viacom. Together the “Big Three” outdoor companies – Viacom, Clear Channel, and Lamar – came to control 40 percent of the revenues generated by the approximately 400,000 billboards across
