Outdoor ads face blackout in Mumbai

It will be a cruel summer for the Rs 225-crore outdoor advertising industry in the country's commercial capital, with the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) banning glow-sign hoardings, kiosks and neon signs in peak evening hours "" between 5 pm and 11 pm "" for three months.

Finance and insurance companies, which normally splash the town with billboards screaming various tax savings schemes in March, have already started reining in their advertising spend.

Shankar Shetty, vice-president of outdoor agency Primesite, said, "Without illumination on the hoardings, the visuals do not create the desired impact. Mumbai is the only city in India where unique concepts of morning and evening sites exist due to traffic movement. While the morning sites will not be impacted, the evening ones will suffer over 50 per cent visibility loss."

This will lead to increased demand for morning sites while there will be hardly any taker for the evening sites. Outdoor ad agencies are set to witness a 20-25 per cent fall in revenue because of this. Besides, ad rates will also fall.

Over 3,000 billboards dot Mumbai. The cost for an illuminated site ranges from Rs 30,000 to Rs 11 lakh per month depending on the location, traffic and visibility. Said Kabir Luthria, director, Kino Advertising, "I think it is immature of the government to do this. Every business utilises power and why should only the outdoor industry suffer?"

Mohammed Reza, head of M'Cons Advertising, said the blackout for hoardings would trigger a boom for mobile hoardings as they ran on electricity generators.

"Mobile hoardings should see a 25 per cent rise in bookings as they will not be impacted by the power shortage." A mobile hoarding today costs about Rs 3,25,000-Rs 3,50,000 a month.

Besides glow signs, lighting on heritage buildings have also been banned by the authorities to save power.

"Hoardings and neon signs use only around 15,000 units of power every day, around 0.5 per cent of the city's total consumption. How will that help the government tide over a 275-Mw daily deficit?" said Altaf Roopani, president of the Mumbai Hoarding Owners' Association.

Girish Sant of Prayas, an NGO involved in energy advocacy, provided the answer when he said, "Switching off neon signs will save around 25 Mw. But more than that, the impact of the order will be in terms of its equity as it will go a long way towards assuring the people that lights in small towns and villages are not being switched off to accommodate business interests in Mumbai."

Demand in the city is likely to outstrip supply by 250-275 Mw during peak hours "" equivalent to 9-10 per cent of the total daily requirement. Already, other areas of Maharashtra have started experiencing 12-hour power cuts, while urban industrial areas have been facing load-shedding for up to four hours daily.

For billboard owners, the next couple of months will mean a rise in input costs as well as haggling with clients negotiating for price cuts.

The blackout will also take the sparkle away from the famed Queen's Necklace on Marine Drive.