Birmingham New Street - Why have the outdoor advertising screens been decommissioned?

[All Line Rover]

With Network Rail taking every possible opportunity to further worsen the passenger experience at London Euston station, recently installing a giant advertising screen in place of a well-positioned departure board on the apparent premise of needing to raise funds, why have they decommissioned the prominent, genuinely well-positioned outdoor advertising screens at Birmingham New Street station?

They were a core part of the design of the external fabric of the rebuilt station. Exactly when were they decommissioned?

 

[ABB125]

A good few years ago I suspect. I definitely recommend seeing adverts at some point, but can't remember how long ago.
What's the betting that they used custom designed, special video wall and processing, rather than off-the-shelf (admittedly with some funny shapes as well) panels and software from the entertainment industry? My suspicion is the former, and that the system has stopped playing nicely. And no-one knows how to make it work again... (There are hundreds of freelance technicians with the skills and knowledge to fix and/or make the software happy for video wall, time the work to avoid festival and conference seasons and they'll be queuing up for the work!)

 

[DelW]

Google Streetview has pictures of the eye-shaped screen working in 2017/18/19 & 2020 (August), but blank in June 2022 & 23.

 

[calum38]

The outdoor advertising screens at Birmingham New Street were likely decommissioned due to technical issues between August 2020 and June 2022.

 

[BlueLeanie]

It could be something far more basic. The commercial cost for electricity can be around £1/kWh, even higher at the start of the Ukraine crisis.

Doing the basic arithmetic that my 43" TV is approximately 0.5 square meters and consumes 100W. The panel at New Street is approximately 40 metres wide and 8 metres tall on average. So I make that potentially 64kW. Plus the powerful graphics cards and chips to actually power it.

Perhaps the income from the advertising on it wasn't earning the £0.5M a year it cost to run it?

 

[DelW]

It could be something far more basic. The commercial cost for electricity can be around £1/kWh, even higher at the start of the Ukraine crisis.

Doing the basic arithmetic that my 43" TV is approximately 0.5 square meters and consumes 100W. The panel at New Street is approximately 40 metres wide and 8 metres tall on average. So I make that potentially 64kW. Plus the powerful graphics cards and chips to actually power it.

Perhaps the income from the advertising on it wasn't earning the £0.5M a year it cost to run it?

Possibly backing up that theory, the Google photos from 2017 & 18 show advertising (Bud Light and the ICC World Cup), 2019 just has a graphic I don't recognise, and 2020 has a city council Covid warning.

It's not an especially appealing spot to stand and look at a screen, so maybe advertising there hadn't been sufficiently popular?

 

[MalaiseForever]

Good question - I’ll find out in work tomorrow. But you’ve just given me an idea on how to fill some of my budget hole…

 

[Mordac]

The ring was thrown into Mt. Doom so the Eye of Sauron went off.