Bye bye silent mall directories

When the Mall of America first opened, its directories were fun to stop and peruse. Not so much now, unless you don’t mind noise pollution. A few years back, the mall augmented their freestanding directory displays with four flat screen TVs apiece (one for each side) at the behest of CBS. Day and night, they play advertising for CBS shows as well as programming on Twin Cities CBS affiliate WCCO.  

The advertising is rounded off with movie trailers and ads for mall retailers like H&M. They are on every freestanding mall directory on every floor. The speakers are located right above the mall maps. This makes trying to find some locale in the mall 100 percent distraction guaranteed. And they didn't even mention the change on their official website.

Why did they have to go and do this? Was CBS targeting America’s largest mall in order to drum up viewers from visitors? All they did was pipe in noise pollution in my opinion.    Luckily enough, all I have to do when I’m looking for someplace at one of these is get my MP3 player blaring. Fight fire with fire, as they say.

But the mall directories are not the only place CBS-oriented advertising blares. A popular event venue, the mall rotunda, is equipped with a massive screen. In between events, they pipe that advertising over it too. The mall now has enough TV-oriented stuff in it that a group of Ray Bradbury’s “fire fighters” from Fahrenheit 451 would feel right at home as they poured kerosene over the paper contents of the Barnes & Noble nearby.

I've rarely noticed anybody watching the stuff they play. For both mall employees and visitors alike, it is just part of the background noise. Saturation advertising can only go so far until people tune-out. I really wish CBS hadn't piped in all that stuff; all it amounts to is noise pollution if you ask me. It is nice the directories located directly off the mall entrances are wall-mounted and TV free…for now. Which leads to the question: Does anybody else know of other malls where CBS has TVs set up on top of mall directories?  

Photos courtesy of author.