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Shanghaied: Taxi screens get the boot
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jun 5, 2009 - 12:07:30 AM

Touch-screen televisions displaying news, quizzes, interactive maps, and loads of advertising have been popping up in taxicabs in North American cities from Vancouver to New York to Santa Monica, Calif., in recent years. But they’re getting the boot in Shanghai.

The city’s Municipal Transport and Port Authority recently released new regulations that will effectively squash taxi ad screens in China's largest city.

It's a huge market. An estimated 90 million passengers take taxi trips each month, and more than 4,000 cabs have the touchscreens.

Under the new regulations, those screens must be removed when their contracts expire, and no new screens can be installed. Equipment that breaks cannot be replaced.

City officials gave no official reason for the ad screen ban but observers say the reason is pretty simple. The Chinese just don’t like them.

Tian Song, a doctoral candidate in communications and information sciences at the University of Alabama who has written extensively about Chinese attitudes toward advertising, says the Chinese have a healthy amount of skepticism toward it, no matter what the medium.

They especially don't like the taxi screens.

“The in-taxi video ads cannot be turned off at the discretion of passengers who feel that they are forced to watch commercials even if they don’t want to,” Song says.

But there are other concerns. “Some of the in-taxi ads were not supposed to show in public due to their sexy content,” Song points out.

Further, he says, “Young parents are concerned about their children’s safety during a taxi ride. Little kids in the back seat seem to like playing interactive games in the ads. To touch the screen, they have to move their head and upper body very close to the screen, which may increase the risk of sustaining head injuries when taxis brake suddenly.”

Ironically, a company that produces many of the screens, Touchmedia, is located in Shanghai. It also happens to be China's largest producer, currently with 100,000 screens in taxis in four cities.

Touchmedia  insists that the new regulations will not affect operations, and it  claims that 96 percent of passengers say they like the system.

Consumer backlash hasn’t been nearly as loud in the U.S. Though an early experiment with the touchscreens in New York City failed six years ago, drivers and passengers seem to be increasingly comfortable with them these days.

They allow riders to pay via credit card, and often they come with an on-off button that allows customers to silence overly chirpy screens.

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