Transit TV

February 7, 2009 by Dave Haynes

(copy of comment I posted on the WSJ site)

I ride the bus in LA every so often. A lot of people found Transit TV annoying. The volume was either turned down so low that it was impossible to hear, or turned up so loud that it blasted your ears.

The news stories were interesting, but weren’t updated frequently, so you ended up hearing the same stories over and over. Same with sports and weather.

The ads were mostly for dubious products and services–work at home schemes, “credit repair” and the like. I know most bus riders are low income, but jeez….

In LA, half the content was in Spanish, making it a big tune-out if you didn’t understand the language.

Occasionally the system would crash, and you’d see (surprise) Windows error messages, or even the BSOD, on the screens. The screens were also yet another target for graffiti.

They did devote a small section of screen for a GPS map showing where the bus was at any given time. (This was not available during ads, only during news stories)