Some billboards have no lights, and others are lighted from dusk until midnight. But in rare cases, some signs are lighted from dusk until dawn. In this Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to review the reasons and complications of lighting billboards all night.
Episode 146: All About All-Night Lighting Transcript
Have you ever been driving down a highway late at night and you've noticed that almost every billboard is completely dark? There are no lights on. And then suddenly up ahead there's a billboard with the lights on full blast. And you think to yourself, wait a minute, is that time clock broken? The answer is no. That is an advertisement that has lighting from dusk until dawn. This is Frank Rolfe with the Billboard Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about the ins and outs of how it works when an advertiser wants to have basically an illuminated sign that is brightly illuminated all night long. Now the first thing you have to ask is, who would need that? And that's a very important item. Let's just go over the kinds of advertisers that would need a sign that is lighted past midnight, which is when most billboards' lights turn off. Well, a truck stop, a 24-hour gas station, a motel, something... Someone who does truck repair, someone who does bail bonding if in fact you got a DUI in the middle of the night.
I mean, there are certain businesses that require it. And the first check on a business that would need it is, is it open 24 hours? If the business is not open 24 hours, they don't need 24-hour lighting. If a McDonald's franchisee says to you, yeah, I wanna have my sign lit all night, the question is, are you open all night? And then the answer is, nope, we close this franchise at midnight. And then the Taco Bell guy says, yeah, I close mine at 2:00 AM. You should never run the lights after the business is closed. Billboards are point-of-purchase advertising. Don't run lights when it's not open. It makes no sense. If someone's getting off the highway to go to the Arby's at the next exit and the Arby's closed at 11:00 PM and it's 3:00 in the morning, why are you telling the person to get off there? And that's why so many businesses are dark at night, is because they're not open past midnight. Many of them are not even open until midnight. So even that is a bit of a teaser. But the first thing when someone wants to run the lights like that is, do you really need them? The next issue on an all-night lighting arrangement is, you're gonna have to charge more for the power because you're talking a substantial commitment in electrical bill here.
Think about it this way. Let's just pick a random time of the year and let's say it gets dark at 7:00 PM and you turn the lights off at midnight. That means you've got five hours of lighting. But then when you run all night, what are you doing? You're tacking on another seven or eight hours to that. You're taking that up to like a 12 or 13-hour-a-day lighting commitment seven days a week. That can make that power bill more than double. So typically when there's a 24-hour lighting situation, you're going to have to tack on to their monthly rent an adjustment for that. The best way to accomplish that, since everywhere has different electrical costs throughout America, is to call the power company and say, hey, if I run these 400-watt Holophanes or 250-watt Holophanes or whatever you have on your sign, if I run them this many extra hours, what is that costing me? And that should roughly be, with a little bit of rounding, what your additional monthly cost should be to the advertiser for running them that much.
But remember that that's not even the whole story. You're putting huge amount of wear and tear on those bulbs and ballasts because now those light fixtures are working more than two times harder than all the others, which means they will burn out two times faster. So make sure the amount you charge monthly to have dusk until dawn lighting, appropriately also covers your best guesses on damage to your equipment and all the repair needs you will have. Now, sometimes the advertiser opens up before it gets light in the morning. Some McDonald's open up as early as 5:00 and 6:00 AM, but there's no sunlight 5:00 to 6:00 AM during most seasons. Well, you can put a second set of teeth or reprogram your digital timer to turn on that extra hour or two in the morning and then again turn off when they close. They don't have to keep it going 24 hours a day just because of that small discrepancy between when it's light in the morning and when they open their doors, although it's a perfectly reasonable request of the advertiser. But you as the sign owner should always be trying to push back. You're always trying to not let them feel the necessity of running their lights all night long.
And also, don't forget, it's very hard for you to check those time clocks when it's all night long. I've always been a big believer that every sign owner needs to go out and check if the lights are going on on their signs at least once a month just to make sure there are not any bulbs out or a bunch of ants did not get into your time clock. It's a common problem in many states, and then they just basically choke the electricity dead. But are you really gonna go drive your signs at 3:00 in the morning? Probably not. And nothing gets your advertiser hotter and madder than when they see that the sign that they are depending on, that they're paying for, does not have its lights on when it's supposed to.
The bottom line is that an advertiser wanting to run their lights all night from dusk until dawn, to them seems like a very reasonable request. But for you as a sign owner, it gives you a lot more permutations of trouble and time and equipment cost and electricity. And if you're going to do that for them, first try and talk them through why. When are they open? What are we trying to achieve? If the answer is, I just wanna make sure my lights are on when I'm open, okay, let's turn them off when you close and turn them on in the morning and then turn them off again when it's daylight. That's a much better bet than running them all night. And if you will run them all night, you have to make sure you get paid for that because it is an expensive undertaking when you run those lights all the way to dawn. This is Frank Rolfe, with the Billboard Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this, talk to you again soon.