Gimme Bus Shelter
How a Norwegian town kept Clear Channel’s ads out.
By Julia Gronnevet, Columbia University
Wednesday January 17, 2007
A small city on the Western coast of Norway, Bergen is a tranquil university town known mainly for its good music and endless rain. Bergen’s historic harbor district is on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, and each year, the picturesque city is overrun with tourists who are charmed by the narrow, crooked, cobbled streets.
Bergen is my home town. More than a quaint tourist attraction, those narrow streets and small houses are what I grew up with. It’s only now, after living in other places, that I’ve begun to understand the value of Bergen. Bergen has a specific look and feel to it, determined by its history stretching back to the time of the Vikings.
But cities face modern needs—and budget constraints. That’s why the Bergen City Council, faced with a lack of cash to maintain municipal bus shelters, turned to corporations, offering companies ad space in the city if they pay for bus shelter maintenance.
In the fall of 2004, the Bergen City Council began negotiations with the giant media company Clear Channel and JCDecaux, the second-biggest outdoor advertiser in the world. The aim was to privatize the maintenance of bus shelters around the city, and also to install some public toilets, which the city lacked the budget to maintain. In return, the company that won the contract would get to place large poster ads on the bus shelters it was maintaining, as well as a number of freestanding lighted billboards with ads. At the beginning of April 2004, it seemed the deal was ready to be inked by the city government, with Clear Channel winning the bid. But then, in an impressive demonstration of organizing power, Bergen’s activist community pulled together an unbelievable protest campaign.
Many were against leasing public space to private interests as a matter of principle. Others were aghast at how the massive increase in advertising would change the historic look of the city. Clear Channel’s reputation and sheer American-ness motivated others to rally against the company. Whatever the motives, the proposed deal between the City Council and Clear Channel managed to unite incredibly diverse groups of people in opposition.
Like many activists, I became politically active organizing for campaigns that seemed doomed from the start—and were. I marched against now-forgotten French atomic tests in 1996. I was there with flaming torches in the night protesting a highway that would (and ultimately did) demolish affordable housing. I took general, principled stands against things like "racism” and ”war”: I dragged my bored friends along from our suburban junior high school. I was used to getting all riled up and then disappointed. This campaign against an American media giant seemed just as doomed, and yet I followed it like many others, stunned each time our resistance seemed to clear an impossible hurdle.
"I think it was decisive that we modeled the campaign on the context, which was Bergen and its Bergenese population. This starting point—our knowledge of the city and understanding of the context—was the basis for a lot of choices we made that ended up being right," Kari Anne Drangsland, one of the activists who was involved in the campaign, told Campus Progress.
"We organized through a mailing list, which was in turn based on attendance at a debate at Landmark [a bar and club with close ties to the art community and gallery with which it shares space] in Bergen.".
"Even though there was a small core group that communicated amongst themselves, large parts of the discussions and planning happened on the mailing list, with about 100 members on it," said Jørgen Larsson, who was also one of the early organizers.
By the end of the summer, the exact terms of the contract became known. In a 15-year binding agreement, Bergen would receive 5.6 million Norwegian Kroner—less than $1 million—per year, and Clear Channel would maintain 900 bus shelters, five bus terminals and three public toilets. All of these spaces would contain advertising space. In addition, the company would put up and maintain 490 "advertising spaces”—billboards, presumably—leaving an additional 50 for public information purposes.
"A good deal," the Bergen Times editorialized.
But the activists felt that his monetary gain would not offset the aesthetic loss.
"We knew all the facts of the case, and we asked the hard questions for the press and the people to hear," Drangsland said. "I also think it was the right strategy to decide not to enter into a dialogue with Clear Channel or JCDecaux, and not to demonise them either. That way, we made it clear that what mattered was Bergen’s and the people’s well-being, and not opposition to ‘capitalists’ or even to these companies, specifically. And to a large extent, the dialogue in town was established as a debate about what kind of city do we want, and not a counterproductive harangue that ’Clear Channel is being mean.’"
The activists’ success in framing the debate in these terms not only meant the debate was civil, but that they succeeded in uniting a wildly diverse group of people around one issue. The campaign wasn’t owned by a group of graphic designers any more than it was owned by the parents’ association or a political party. It was an easy group to join and become part of.
In my own experience, taking part in this campaign was not just a statement of social identity, as many activist campaigns all too frequently become. It was an issue-based campaign with a specific goal in mind: to keep Clear Channel out of Bergen.
Larsson thinks that the broad base of the campaign was in fact one of the strongest reasons for its success.
"The front lines in this situation were very unclear. There were people from very different groupings and political views, but they all gathered around this campaign: ’Keep Clear Channel out of Bergen.’"
The tide began to turn against Clear Channel in the summer of 2005. Jon Skjerdal, a cultural organizer receiving an award from the city for his contributions to public life, turned the scheduled nice-but-dull event into a strong, symbolic statement.
"Completely unexpectedly, and with a quaking voice, Jon Skjerdal returned the cultural award to the Hordaland County government just one minute after receiving it," a Bergen newspaper reported .
"I can’t accept a cultural award from a city council that’s planning to sell the city’s public space next Monday," he said.
Drangsland remembered, "There was undoubtedly a symbolic value to our being a diverse group of people. ... And also a great symbolic value that shouldn’t be underestimated, was the fact that we had cultural opinion makers with us, and the so-called ‘creative elite.’"
Kings of Convenience, Karin Park, and other bands pitched in and at the end of October played a free concert in support of the campaign. But by that time, the tide had already turned. A month earlier, and in the face of what was now a massive public outcry, the City Council voted by the smallest possible margin to extend the deadline for making a decision. Days of debate within the Labor Party followed, before a decision emerged on October 15: The City Council was now against the deal.
Clear Channel immediately threatened to sue the City Council for breach of contract, and in December made good on their promise, demanding 50 million NKR in restitution.
"We’re waiting, apprehensively, for the case to come to court," Jørgen told Campus Progress.
While we wait, Bergen remains a small, quaint city that’s managed to keep much of its character—with less advertising than its American counterparts. And if Bergen and its activist community can win a say in how their public space looks, only time can tell what properly organized activists in anywhere can achieve.
Julia Gronnevet is pursuing her master’s at the Columbia School of Journalism. She graduated from the University of Bergen and her writing has appeared in The American Prospect Online.
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oh julia now i know why you are so amazing.
— cassandra - Jan 19, 02:07 PM - #that is a lovely story!
— Michele - Jan 19, 09:25 PM - #are there any ideas for how to raise money for the bus shelters and public toilets?
Hey, Julia! What an inspiring message!
— Shirley Chase - Jan 24, 12:10 PM - #byen vår! :D
— karen - Jan 24, 02:04 PM - #Julia—One never knows when a spark of an idea really pays off! Terrific!
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