Station tune-in
Flat-screen televisions at Mass. Pike service plazas are getting a mixed reception from travelers
NATICK - Commuters on the Massachusetts Turnpike put up with a lot. There's rush-hour traffic, tolls, more traffic, idiot drivers, car accidents, and enough anger to leave even the most stoic driver simmering with frustration.
But take heart, weary commuter. Just up ahead, there is television to ease the pain, 90 flat-screen televisions to be exact, flickering day and night on 4-minute loops above the gas pumps at the service plazas in Natick, Framingham, Westborough, and Charlton.
The screens, which were installed last week at Gulf gas stations on the Pike and are the first at Massachusetts gas stations, offer news bytes, sports highlights, and the latest Hollywood gossip.
But the driving force here, of course, is advertising. In a wired world where many consumers can fast-forward through commercials or just change the channel, TVs at the gas pump - and other locations like grocery store check-out lanes, elevators, and even bathrooms - offer advertisers a new frontier.
Here, there is no way to switch channels or even adjust the volume. Here, the audience is captive and probably bored. Here, advertisers hawking soda have potential customers right where they want them: a short walk away from a minimart selling their product. For these reasons, local drivers are about to see a lot more TV at the pump in the coming weeks and not just on the Pike.
Gasoline stations from Worcester to Arlington, Leominster to Stoughton, will soon be glowing with televisions, according to Gas Station TV, the Michigan company responsible for the flat-screens on the Pike. David Leider, chief executive officer, said the company expects to open 50 locations in the Boston market in the next month. And Fuelcast Media Network, a gas station television provider based in Los Angeles, expects to enter the fray in Massachusetts by late summer.
All this is good news for folks like Kevin Dodgson. The Ohio State University student, in Boston for St. Patrick's Day, fueled up in Framingham yesterday on his way back to Ohio and perked up when the television above his head started reeling off sports highlights.
But others, like Westfield pharmaceutical salesman Tim Murphy, are already annoyed. Driving the Pike back and forth to Boston all the time is bad enough, Murphy said, without a TV screaming mindless information into his ear.
"Can't stand it," he said yesterday as he fueled up his Ford Explorer for $3.18 a gallon. "Drives me crazy. It's just intrusive. I can't get away from it."
Gas Station TV, based outside Detroit, installed its first TVs at gas stations in Dallas in January 2006, Leider said, and has since added some 5,400 screens in 375 other cities.
The company, which installed the televisions on the Pike at its own cost and contributes no money to the cash-strapped Turnpike Authority itself, now boasts 20 million viewers a month.
But it is hardly the only company venturing into an industry known as out-of-home video advertising.
Premier Retail Networks, a San Francisco-based company, reaches more than 600 million shoppers a month via televisions in 6,000 stores nationwide, including 226 locations in the Boston market. According to PQ Media, a media research consultant in Stamford, Conn., this type of company is capitalizing on one of the fastest growing advertising trends.
Last year, according to PQ Media data, out-of-home video advertising generated $2.1 billion in ad revenue, a small figure compared with the estimated $70 billion brought in by network and cable television.
But Leo Kivijarv, PQ Media's vice president of research, said that out-of-home video advertising grew by almost 25 percent last year, compared with the ad industry's 5 percent growth rate overall, and projected that it would grow almost three times over by 2011.
"It is impervious in most cases to ad-skipping technology," Kivijarv explained, "so when you're at that gas pump, you really don't have the option to turn it off."
That is one reason why Gas Station TV works, Leider said. "We like to say the consumer is tied to the screen with an 8-foot rubber hose for five minutes."
In that time, according to a recent study by Nielsen Strategic Media Research, the ads are actually connecting with people. Seventy percent of people in the Nielsen study recalled products being advertised, and 84 percent said they would watch the gas pump TVs on their next visit.
"It gives you something to watch," acknowledged Matt Savage, 29, a Boston man who was fueling up his Chevy Blazer in Natick yesterday while the television overhead flashed the news of the day from CBS and ESPN.
Interspersed between news of the Celtics' latest win and rumors of Madonna's divorce, there were ads for CBS TV shows, the Chevrolet Malibu,
"Need a pick-me-up? Come in and grab an energy drink for the road," one ad said.
Shana Onigman, who was on her way home to New Jersey after visiting her father in Reading, just shook her head, amazed and a bit saddened by the blaring TV. Then she climbed into her
The Onigman family does not own a television.
Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com. 