Digital & Dirt
00:05:38 · Bobby Switzer, Ian Dallimore
It's one thing getting a digital sign, the other thing is having complete control of it. [00:05:46] S0: Yeah. And I... Most of our listeners, Bobby, are are newer to the industry itself, and and it's kind of interesting because some of my friends that are in the space, they just find a great screen, find a placement. It's just like, oh, boom, boom, boom, plug in, play, control. And what you and for our listeners, Rod Rackley is now the president of Circle Graphics. And Kevin Riley is our chairman, former CEO while Bobby was here. And what's interesting is you guys were literally having to change as technology changed and piece things together. And I think the control aspect, that was the key. And I remember when I first started, we were I guess it was four, three and onetwo years we had had digital in our network operating center. So that's kind of what you and Rod had built out and others, Bill Rip included, who's still with the company. You guys built out this control center. And that was, at the time, game changer because no one else even had... Were controlling their own boards in the very beginning, but Lamar was.
00:06:47 · Bobby Switzer, Ian Dallimore
[00:06:47] S1: Yeah. That was... Bill Rip came in after Rod left, and we felt Bill was probably the best candidate to take the ball and run with it. And the good thing for Bill was it was an actual product. When Rod and I were fooling with it, it wasn't a real product. It was it was held together with gum and everything. And there's a lot of funny stories that go along with it, but one was we crushed ourselves when we decided to put trim around the boards because we wanted to make them look different than the billboards. And in doing so, they screwed holes all in the the frame, and we couldn't figure out why water was getting in. And so we just kept thinking Pittsburgh is awfully wet. And so that was a long struggle in getting through this because you had a lot of unhappy customers. [00:07:46] S0: Right. And so as you guys evolve the product, you're learning more efficiencies. One of the things that I often tell clients is it's a lot like a TV, right? So over time, I know when I was a kid, we had those big tube TVs and now they've evolved and they're literally the size of your hand turned sideways. And maybe touch on that a bit, having an air conditioning unit to keep the digitals cool because I'm sure we had issues with it powering down and powering up because they would overheat. Maybe talk a little bit about the different nuances. I know the louvers is a big thing that a lot of people aren't aware of. So it wasn't just put a screen up and figure out how to send a message to it. There was the elements of it being outdoor twenty four seven, which was very difficult.
00:07:46 · Ian Dallimore, Bobby Switzer
[00:07:46] S0: Right. And so as you guys evolve the product, you're learning more efficiencies. One of the things that I often tell clients is it's a lot like a TV, right? So over time, I know when I was a kid, we had those big tube TVs and now they've evolved and they're literally the size of your hand turned sideways. And maybe touch on that a bit, having an air conditioning unit to keep the digitals cool because I'm sure we had issues with it powering down and powering up because they would overheat. Maybe talk a little bit about the different nuances. I know the louvers is a big thing that a lot of people aren't aware of. So it wasn't just put a screen up and figure out how to send a message to it. There was the elements of it being outdoor twenty four seven, which was very difficult. [00:08:32] S1: Well, one of the things and one of the big problems I have is I'll either assume you know everything that I know, or I assume you know nothing. [00:08:40] S0: Let's assume we know nothing.
00:08:41 · Bobby Switzer
[00:08:41] S1: Okay. So I'm gonna assume, first of all, LEDs are light emitting diodes, and they either... They produce two things. You put electricity to them, and they either produce heat or light. And when we first started, we were dealing with pretty inefficient LEDs, so it created a lot more heat than it did light. So you had to cram a lot of electricity into the product, and in doing so, you created a lot of heat to get the light that you needed. And there's just some some technicalities in how much light was coming out of those first LEDs. At the beginning, they were somewhere around 5,000, what they call nits, which is a measurement of light. And today, I think they're above 12,000 nits. And so we... Today, we run them at probably 50%, if not less, that heat. And the interesting thing about LEDs, the more they get efficient, the less energy you need to give to them to create more light. Therefore, less heat is generated. And as the product improves, we benefit in that we can run our LEDs less, they become less expensive, and there's less power and less heat. And so all those things really benefit the LED display maker and the user because at the end of the day, it costs less to to generate, less to buy, and they last longer because heat is the enemy of the age of the product. So all those things are happening over the twenty years. And today, I really don't know all the numbers today exactly, but I would say that we're probably at half the amount of of electrical bills that we were demonstrating after twenty years. So we were half of what it was twenty years ago, and the price of electricity has gone up. So it's really a great move for the the display makers.
00:10:56 · Ian Dallimore
[00:10:56] S0: Yeah. So so we talked about the the evolution of technology, how we had pitfalls on the the technical side. I remember in the early days, like in Baton Rouge and Pittsburgh were the first two digital out of home locations. And I actually remember visiting both multiple times, and one of them, obviously corporate offices right across from it. And it's been interesting watching that thing evolve over time. But more importantly, the question a lot of people ask because for billboards it's different. There's a lot of legality that goes into it. There's a lot of loopholes that you have to jump through in each county and each parish. In the beginning, how did you select Pittsburgh and Baton Rouge? Baton Rouge makes sense because our corporate office is there, but why Pittsburgh? And then as it evolved, how did we determine where these very costly at the time locations and and units would go up?
00:11:44 · Bobby Switzer
[00:11:44] S1: Well, we started with Baton Rouge because it was easy in the sense that we were there, and we knew that market, and and legally, we could put one up. But, really, what we did at the beginning, nobody likes change, and this was a big change. So what really we wanted is if a manager called up and said they wanted one and they could demonstrate that they could pay it back, we were anxious to give it to them. So it really... Pittsburgh showed up because Stan Guyer stood up and said, me first. I want it. And we gave him not only that first large digital, at the time, I think that was a 14 by 40. We couldn't even afford the... To do the whole board because it was $500,000 to to the whole board, and then we put a static backlight on the end, and it was just sort of promoting the sign. So we... Just trying to get it in so we can make make some money. And not that we were we were definitely interested in making money, but at the beginning, we were really just... We had a budget, and we'll see what... If we can do it. And the cool part about it is we were able to pay for it all the way through with revenue. And so from day one, I think the first one made money.