t’s been a long time since I’ve looked upon Times Square as a destination for drugs, but that will change tonight, at 8 p.m., when the heart of Times Square becomes the Mecca of pharmaceuticals, albeit legal ones. That’s when Walgreens, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, will throw the switch illuminating its new flagship location, occupying the first three levels of One Times Square, and launches the largest digital, out-of-home video ad ever to be affiliated with a drugstore, and possibly any retail location in the world: a massive, digital “super sign” soaring 341 feet above the street.

Digital out-of-home is still, by common agreement, one of the most promising new media, enviably poised for long-term growth. But that doesn’t mean things are going to be pretty in the near term; in fact, given the unprecedented and unpredictable economic situation, how could they be? The current financial crisis has already laid low one big DO network, halted the roll-out plans of a second, and claimed a promising DO research initiative to boot.

Campaign ‘08 rewrote the history books for most major media, including one with the least amount of history: digital out-of-home. Much has been made about the use of the Web, social media, email, and the big story Wednesday morning was how major market newspapers were selling out their newsstand issues. But in a small, but significant way, digital out-of-home played a unique role as the election returns took on an unusually public nature Tuesday night. Due partly to unseasonably warm weather in northern states, as well as to a groundswell of public participation, election-related digital signage was visible to pedestrians and TV and Web viewers alike.

In a poll that has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since it began running in 1992, classroom video news network Channel One has Barack Obama trouncing John McCain by a 17-point margin, with 58.5% of the vote to McCain’s 41.5%.

Last week, Interpublic’s vaunted Emerging Media Lab announced a partnership with a promising new “augmented reality” technology that will enable marketers to integrate their brands by merging virtual, 3D elements into real, on-the-fly video programming. The deal with augmented reality application developer Total Immersion initially is intended to explore ways of integrating the technology into digital out-of-home media, but as TI CEO Bruno Uzzan explains in the following Q&A, the plan ultimately is to take augmented reality into every screen, and any form of content — from marketing and entertainment to healthcare, education and maybe even pornography.

The digital out-of-home video business has proved more resilient than most, as place-based video networks continue to launch new services and extensions — with three new initiatives this week alone. But the ongoing credit crunch seems to have claimed its first casualty, as well.

Passengers boarding the M23 bus along 23rd street in Manhattan are likely to get a jolt in the next several weeks as the likeness of James Bond star Daniel Craig seemingly comes to life and approaches them with an automatic weapon from the side of the bus. The digital video image, part of the first ever use of digital advertising displays mounted on the side of a major city transit system, is one of the executions being conceived by a creative team working to promote the upcoming release of the next Bond thriller “Quantum of Solace” on a new digital out-of-home advertising network being deployed by Titan Worldwide.

Everything needs an acronym, so maybe we should call this “OOHO” — the combination of out-of-home and online platforms, which have surged in popularity over the last year. The most recent entrant is ON Networks, which announced earlier this week that it has created a multiscreen video distribution network reaching over 100 million viewers in the U.S. and Europe with syndicated TV shows and accompanying advertising.

One of the ad industry’s top digital outsiders is getting inside some pretty big agencies. During an update on various initiatives by the bureau, Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau President Suzanne Alecia confirmed OVAB is in discussions with Havas’ MPG unit about scheduling a special “Collaborative Alliance” meeting that would focus exclusively on digital out-of-home developments, and potentially, deals.

As digital out-of-home video networks grow by leaps and bounds, a separate industry has emerged that’s devoted entirely to collecting networks together to offer media buyers a single point of sale. As intermediaries, they usually don’t own the place-based networks they deal with; their value proposition to media planners lies in the objective analysis of each network’s capabilities, and aggregating the right networks to achieve a particular campaign’s goal. Following is a roundup of some of the companies that, well, round up out-of-home video networks.