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Billboard Advertising

Monday - January 10, 2005 (GMT+8)

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The opinions stated in the letters do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the bagiw.com administrator or editor. We intend this section solely as a venue for visitors to our website to express their opinions and air their concerns. It is our hope that the issues raised will reach persons in authority who can address these concerns.

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The Advertising Board of the Philippines

Metro Manila

Dear Sir/Madam:

Greetings!

If one takes a trip to Baguio City starting from Pasay City, the one most noticeable thing about the landscape that flashes by is the fact that there is no landscape! Of course I am exaggerating – only because of the oppression I feel when what should be a refreshing seven or eight-hour bus ride (the least one can do to kill the ennui is to appreciate the countryside) becomes a overly ad-punctuated reality show through quiet, rustic villages.

One may pardon too much commercialism in the towns and cities but to impinge on the serenity of the land and the majesty of the skies ultimately enslaves and destroys the human spirit which longs to escape the tyranny of mammon. For instance, why do we allow giant billboards spaced every hundred meters or less along the Candaba Viaduct when out of the window beckons a 360-degree living view of the central plains that would render all of Amorsolo and Hidalgo's paintings put together seem like postal stamps? And we haven't even mentioned the glistening Sierra Madre and Cordillera mountains now vying for attention behind Globe and Smart models.

May I therefore appeal to your -- and everyone's -- good senses to put a stop to this mental torture, which I believe together with inane computer games, has dulled the minds of thousands of our citizens most particularly the young. If I had the money I would put out an ad that says, "Billboards are windows to life, not shutters to close our vision".

Hence, may I respectfully suggest that a move be made to prohibit free-standing billboards especially in areas where our perspective of our country's wealth and heritage gets obliterated. While we're at it, why not remove the clutter that already suffocates our cities.

Apart from the physical and psychological dangers they pose to human life, limb and liberty, billboards have come to represent economic abuse and misuse of our resources.

Free the land! Free the skies! Free our vision! No to free-standing billboards!

Yours truly,

V. M. Ragay

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