Notorious Beam Team

From Londonist:

"As of today, giant cinema-style screens have been installed opposite platforms at Piccadilly Circus, Euston, Bank, Liverpool Street and Bond Street stations to bombard you with cutting-edge advertising intended to 'enhance' your journey.

The system, called XTP, is centrally controlled so that advertising folk can decide what you need to see at different times of the day: commute to work with Sky News, get out to lunch with the trailer for Kung-Fu Panda and go home to Sky Movies or Nestle. Clever.

Disingenously, the Marketing Director for CBS Outdoor claims that:

The launch of XTP is about entertaining the three and half million passengers using the Tube each day.

Um. No. It's about pushing advertising in the faces of a captive audience. One that can quite capably choose to zone out the tube poster ads or use them as reading material on the way home but one that would probably prefer to escape from flashing images on a digital screen for half an hour or so each day.

At least they're silent. We're thankful for small mercies."

This certainly isn't opt in. Flashy and innovative it might well be. But a good thing for commuters? Unlikely.