Those annoying TVs in NYC taxis will be phased out of existence

But those screens are on the way out, after the Taxi and Limousine Commission approved a pilot program on Thursday that will eventually eliminate the TVs.

“I thought I was the only one who didn’t like Taxi TV”, one TLC board member mused before the vote on Thursday.

Using Global Positioning System to determine how much consumers owe when riding the yellow cabs is part of the agency’s initiative to remove doubts surrounding whether or not the current dashboard meter used is guilty of overcharging.

The pilot program will see to the removal of TVs from up to 1,000 cabs and replace them with what the TLC said was “less invasive technology”.

Various aspects of the trial will be closely monitored, including the effectiveness of GPS-based meter technology, as well as the practicability of the devices for the blind.

The Taxi TV’s were first installed in cabs 8 years ago and gave riders a way to pay for fares with their credit or debit cards, while providing the city with up to $6 million in free public ads annually.

The move follows complaints from passengers and drivers about the annoyance of the loud TVs. But as with everything else involving taxis these days, the idea is also to make yellow cabs more competitive with Uber, Lyft and other on-demand auto services that don’t force-feed their passengers tape loops of local news.

This may come as a relief for a few taxi drivers and riders, whom the TLC has said find the screens annoying.

One possibility would have drivers hand a tablet or smartphone with a credit card reader to passengers for payment.