Coming Soon: ESPN at the Gas Station

Back when I was in high school, a marketing teacher of mine quaintly said that in the near future we will be able to pay for gas using cash at the pump, sort of like how a vending machine works. He said that the new credit card slots at the pump have been such a great addition that it is inevitable that the cash slot will come soon.

That was 1993. Instead, we have all kinds of stupid little things attached to our gas pumps to distract us [the best is that picture of a cop telling me that driving off without paying for my fuel is a crime]. Soon, we will have ESPN at the pumps to keep us busy.

According to USAToday, ESPNews will be coming to your gas pumping experience via something called Gas Station TV [click on that link to see happy patrons watching it].

There's a reason drivers pull out of traffic and park it at select high volume pumps: GSTV. Gas Station TV entertains, informs and advertises directly to customers as they fuel up their rides. Daylight viewable LCD screens perched above the pump provide a constant shout out of targeted, first-rate ABC and ESPN programming and sponsored messages down to each individual gas station. There are no clickers handy to surf with or DVR's to slide by the targeted ad content, just one channel, one driver.

Why not? We have TVs plopped throughout shopping centers, lines at the amusement parks, restaurants, banks, the doctor's office and pretty much every menial task we have to do every day. So why wouldn't gas stations try to avert us from watching how much our gas is costing us? The only cool thing here is that it's ESPNews up there and, well, when the wife makes you pump the gas you can catch up on what's going on. I mean, that's a bit better than the ol' sports-section-above-the-urinal trick.