DailyDOOH

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

In the middle of March just after #dse2012 we wrote a bold piece, Harris To Shut Its Signage / DOOH Division? we said after hearing plenty of rumours in Lost Wages and talking to several consultants looking for their next meal ticket and seeing more than the usual amount of resumes on the streets.

The people involved (consultants and staff) obviously knew something was up due to the speed in which they were all trying to negotiate their exit but I wonder if they knew the enormity of what lay ahead as news just in is that Harris is in actual fact attempting to sell off its entire Broadcast Division.

The Harris statement said that it has increasingly seen its growth come from the defense/military sector, and said:-

• the business of making equipment and supplies for radio and TV stations “is no longer aligned with the company’s long-term strategy.”
• we need another war to increase our profits^†

At this moment in time we are not sure who might want to buy an entire Broadcast business and we doubt very much that the digital signage business would be of interest to any purchaser (especially with the DDN 7-Eleven business so dependent, or as Sixteen:Nine’s Dave Haynes so eloquently put it “I don’t know, but can’t possibly imagine the 7-Eleven TV thing being anything but an enormous ball and chain”).

Dave and ourselves are also in agreement, where he says “Digital signage is a teeny business unit so it might survive, might get wound down. Unfortunately, my money would be on the latter”.

So that’s it then, many vendors will rub their hands with Summer Glau some glee and say “Another One Bites The Dust”.

^†Okay it didn’t really say that, we made it up, Ed

 Print This Post

Tweet

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 15:42 @696 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.