With threats of two more fare increases in two years (on top of this year's hike) looming over straphangers' heads, the MTA is looking for more sources of revenue. One way to do that is to let corporations (and their ad agencies) take over stations throughout the city and coat each with light, paint and whatever material it takes put more messages of mass-consumerism into New Yorkers daily grind.
From AM New York:
Sponsorship, little more than a sketch on paper at this point, could become the most visible component of the agency's aggressive push to increase advertising revenue, which currently brings in a little more than $100 million a year.
Marketing firms "have contacted us to say that they have ideas and we're in the process of reviewing those," Sander said.
MTA officials would not provide further details on station sponsorships.
"There are a dozen people that would jump on this," said MTA board member Norman Seabrook, who called for the agency to rent subway stations to Disney several months ago. "There are thousands of people losing their jobs everyday and we cannot sit by and continue to raise their fares."
When the MTA makes it a choice between raising fares and plastering our subway stations with advertising, it isn't hard to decide on which the great majority will go with. However, the problem is that the situation was allowed to come to this, where we must be subjected to more consumer crap stuffed into our eyesockets. Sure, the stations are dilapidated and anything new would be an improvement, but again, the thing is we are forced into choices that let the corporate world push farther and farther into our lives, as opposed to just having a well-run MTA that doesn't experience hundreds of billions in yearly deficits.
|