In December, the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., signed a contract for SCS/Track from Software Consulting Services L.L.C. for display ad tracking and to streamline the production of ads.

The Times Herald-Record (daily, 82,478; Sunday, 94,394) is the flagship publication of Ottaway Newspapers. The newspaper will run the system on dual Linux servers to support ad builders and a handful of administrative staffers using QuarkXPress for Windows.

rADar is a page tracking module that allows users to view the newspaper edition. The color on the screen indicates the status of the ads.
Photo courtesy of SCS

“Basically, we have about 30 people creating ads,” said Jesse Hochberg, manager of systems and digital technology at the Times Herald-Record. There will be 25 ad builder workstations and five workstations set up for administration and sales managers.

The Times Herald-Record chose the system in conjunction with fellow Ottaway newspaper, the Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Mass.

“We looked at various different demonstrations and various different products,” Hochberg explained. “We would call up and they would come and do their ‘dog-and-pony shows.’ Basically, I liked what SCS had to say and I liked what their product looked like.”

Hochberg sat in on demos with about a half a dozen other newspaper staff members, who were all involved in choosing the advertising system.

SCS/Track organizes ad files and allows ad builders to focus on building ads.

“I’m anticipating a more organized ad flow, I’m anticipating easier pickups and I’m anticipating just a better working environment,” Hochberg said. “I [view it as] taking the stupidity out of the ad creation process, because if [someone needs a pickup of an ad that ran three months ago] then you have to go search through CDs and find the CD burned that particular day and then go find the ad on that CD. This makes life a lot easier.”

SCS/Track uses site-defined rules to prioritize and assign ad jobs to the appropriate ad builder, team or station. Ad builders can launch jobs directly into their ad creation software and documents are appropriately named and sized.

The Times Herald-Record uses QuarkXPress for ad creation and is one of a minority of newspapers running Quark on PC workstations.

“We have Macs — there are instances where you need the Mac — but for the most part, everything we create in-house is PC-based,” Hochberg said. He also said that contrary to popular beliefs about QuarkXPress being better suited to Macs, there have been several improvements over the years that have made it more suitable for PC environments.

“There are some of us that do that — it really can be done,” he said.

SCS/Track also prints electronic insertion orders automatically or as they are demanded. The system includes preflighting functions to verify fonts, ad sizes and EPS validity.

The latest release of SCS/Track lets users access key functions from a command toolbar, such as importing AdSend ads, faxing or e-mailing proofs or sending completed ads to be preflighted. The new rADar page management module enables users to check ad status and placement information against information from their ad dummying system. Completed ad images are sent to the pagination system using various methods of file transfer. Ads can also be sent to different locations, depending on the publication site and whether an ad is for the classified section or the news pages of a paper.

Installation at The Times Herald-Record is now slated to begin March 25, after being pushed back from the initial installation date due to the fact that the newspaper has also had to recently fit new PC desktops into its budget. The new go-live date is April 1.

“One thing we did discover when we were going through the process of investigating is that no matter whose system a newspaper had, they were happy with it because it made the ad flow process a lot better,” Hochberg said.

At The Times Herald-Record, the SCS system will interface with Ottaway Newspapers centralized corporate ad order entry system. The Cape Code Times is also installing its SCS/Track system this month, beginning March 11, with go-live slated for March 15.