Dothan, AL Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

City Code § 114-215 governs permanent off-premise signs, meaning billboards, and paragraph (10) sets the specific rules for digital or electronic billboard displays. A digital billboard's images may not contain or appear to contain movement, animation, flashing, scrolling, intermittent or rotating lights, or full-motion video, and each displayed message must remain on screen for at least eight seconds with no more than a two-second transition to the next image. Spacing between structures carrying digital displays, whether single-face or back-to-back, must be at least a 2,000-foot radius measured from the center of the display, and a digital billboard must sit within a 1,000-foot radius of an intersecting state highway or arterial street that the code defines as a major thoroughfare.

Three intersections are named as off-limits entirely: no digital billboard may be erected at Main Street and Park Avenue, Main Street and Woodland Drive, or Woodland Drive and Fortner Street. Digital displays also cannot sit closer than 250 feet to any residential district, a tighter buffer than the 100-foot residential setback that applies to off-premise signs generally under § 114-215(9). Brightness must dim automatically at night or in darkened conditions under the illumination standards in § 114-222, which caps digital billboards at 5,000 nits in daylight and 500 nits between sunset and sunrise. Existing conforming billboards may be converted to add digital technology if they meet all of these setback, spacing, and brightness standards.