Respite!
In a nod to years of griping from captive passengers, taxi officials agreed to let the owners of the new cabs decide whether to install the screens, which are required in the city’s 13,000 yellow taxis.
“With Taxi TV, there’s a diversity of opinion as to the value for passengers,” David S. Yassky, the taxi and limousine commissioner, said rather delicately. “So it makes more sense to leave it up to the taxi owners.”
Translation: no one liked them except for the media companies who drove their adoption. File Taxi TV with QR codes, Cuecat, mobile TV, TV check-in apps and other products spurred by marketing and media company desires rather than actual consumer demand or use cases.
I’d argue NFC payments (in their current form) fall under this umbrella as well. But that’s a longer post. (Via NYT)
Taxi TV can not disappear fast enough.
Rejoice! If we had a nickel for every time we fumbled to hit mute on Taxi TV, well, we’d sure have a lot of nickels, I’ll tell you.
forget taxi tv… but if the screens go, credit card payment becomes instantly more difficult again… bad idea.
Good point. I hate the TV, but maybe they could make it a more passive/opt-in media center. Instead of immediately turning on to the TV, an option like “Turn On TV” or “Read News Headlines” would nice…what about an ambient noise machine? Rainfall or Quiet Ocean would be nice options in midtown at 5:43 p.m.
4 months ago