The owners of the billboards did not remove the advertisements from the bridges after their termination, they enclosed some of them with Ukrainian flags
Last year, at the end of the main August, the Prague City Council decided not to extend the historic contract for the lease of bridges for the purpose of placing advertising banners. The contract between the city and AMMA with an automatic ten-year extension was concluded in 1992, followed by an addendum in 1998 and a settlement agreement in 2008. The legally mentioned company is the company Outor, which belongs to the BigBoard advertising, which is the successor of Czech advertising on the Czech outdoor advertising market.
The six-month notice period then expired in March this year, when the advertisement was to disappear from a number of Prague bridges. However, Czech Outdoor did not do so because I do not agree with the statement and I do not consider it valid.
Therefore, the city’s Technical Communications Administration (TSK) has recently started removing advertising.
“We have started the gradual removal of advertisements within TSK and we are waiting for a possible reaction from Czech Outdoor. Our primary goal is generally to terminate the lease as determined by the Board. The company does not agree with our statement and can theoretically decide everything, “said TSK spokeswoman Barbora Lišková when asked about the News.
TSK handcuffed to increase its costs and does not currently deal with reimbursement of costs, because in the event of an unfavorable court decision, it could expose it to a “risk of damages”.
News requested for comments also to the BigBoard group. Its spokeswoman Pavlína Stránská rejected the mistakes.
“It is not true that the person in question should have been terminated by this year’s contract. In order to run most of our advertising, our company has a fixed-term contract with TSK and it is still valid. Therefore, there is no reason to remove the areas and keeping them continues, “Stránská said.
The company probably argues with the above-mentioned agreement between TSK and its predecessor Czech Outdoor from 2008, according to which the possibility of non-renewal of the contract at ten-year intervals should not occur until 2028, not in 2022. In.
Instead of removing the flag again
The company has been wrapping Ukrainian flags in recent weeks, according to the city’s decision, which should no longer be on the bridges. A similar tactic was chosen by outdoor advertising operators years ago when a law banning billboards near highways and first-class roads came into force. At that time, thousands of advertising spaces were wrapped in Czech flags as part of a protest action on traffic lanes and remained so even after the start of the ban. The state, as a black building, then gradually removed the banners, unless the owners did so.
“In view of the events in Ukraine, we have decided to set aside part of the space for the placement of Ukrainian flags, with which we want to express our support for this country,” Stránská explained the step.
The Kverulant.org server, for example, also stopped at this fact in connection with the fact that in the past there was speculation about the connection of the BigBoard group to Russia. In about 2008, the company donated several large-scale billboards to the No Basic initiative, which loudly protested against the construction of an American radar in Brdy, which Russia tried to prevent.
The company’s activities in relation to the controversial initiative and the Russian Federation were even monitored by the Security Information Service (BIS) in recent years, Aktuálně.cz reported at the time.