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- BUSINESS, Page 45Business NotesADVERTISINGBroadway's Big Bottleneck
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- Who says Times Square has lost its famous gaudy sparkle? At
- 11:53 p.m. on New Year's Eve, Coca-Cola flipped on the switch to
- launch its contribution to Broadway's born-again glitz: a $3
- million, 55-ton billboard featuring a four-story Coke bottle
- made of fiber glass. A high-tech version of the Coke sign that
- has reigned in various Times Square locations for 75 years, the
- billboard contains a mile of neon tubing, 60 miles of optical
- fiber and more than 13,000 incandescent light bulbs. Controlled
- by a robotic animation system, the giant bottle pops its cap, a
- straw emerges, and the soda level rises and falls as if King
- Kong were guzzling it. The optical fiber sparkles to give the
- appearance of a carbonated brown liquid.
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- The sign, which goes into full computer-controlled action
- next month, is part of a comeback in flashy Times Square
- billboards. But this time most of them were erected by Japanese
- companies, including Canon, Sony, Fuji Film and Suntory liquors.
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