How much solar energy does it take to run a giant digital billboard 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year?

The night sky above Polly Osborne’s home — and the bedroom she shares with her husband — began to glow several months ago, when a digital billboard went up at an intersection behind her tree-lined street in Westwood.

Calling them a "visual assault" and "visual blight" on their community, 25 people canvassed City Councilman Bill Rosendahl's Westside district Saturday morning to determine how many billboards -- digital or otherwise -- have saturated the area.

Taking aim at digital billboards in the wake of intense opposition from community groups in Hollywood, Venice, Encino, Silver Lake and other areas, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission adopted a preliminary motion to ban all new electronic billboards for a year.

The flashing electronic billboard in Arden Hills stays off.

The State Senate shot down a plan to put up dozens of electronic billboards along freeways at various sites around Southern California with a vote Tuesday night.

A rumor on the streets of SA — streets soon to be glamourized by the high-def glow of 15 digital billboards — is that Clear Channel Outdoor, the nature-advertising arm of SA-based media behemoth Clear Channel Communications, knows it’s not going to get one more ever-lovin’ electrical signpost. So when City Council passed the “pilot program” last December that gave the Mays’ family jewel a dozen of those 15 pilot boards, Clear Channel was poised to grab prime spots.

Lamar Advertising Co. has one more appeal to exhaust, short of going to court, in its push to bring digital billboards to the city of Knoxville.

Since 2005 a new kind of billboard has risen along highways in and around Cleveland: digital panels that are like TV sets the size of drive-in movie screens that only play commercials. Mounted high, the mercenary Jumbotrons dominate the landscape with a different message every eight seconds.

Bismarck city commissioners have put a six-month hold on electronic moving image signs and digital billboards while they consider how to regulate them.