After an evaluation of computer-to-plate technology, newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises Inc. has opted to stick with filmsetters. Film will take the newspaper group through at least the next two years.

Two of Lee’s newspapers have made the move to CTP; however, the remaining papers, including those purchased from Howard Publications in April 2002, are imaging film. Many of the former Howard newspapers are in the process of implementing a mix of APS 3850 narrow and wide filmsetters and Accuset 1000s from Agfa unit Autologic.

“When we bought the Howard group, they had only one imagesetter at most of their plants and they were old,” said John Van Strydonck, vice president of publishing for Lee and publisher of the Missoulian in Montana. “We needed to do something right away, on a fairly large basis. And we were able to get pretty favorable pricing on the hardware — relative to CTP it was just a fraction — and also favorable pricing on film.”

Vendor, payback worries

Many of the 17 Howard dailies purchased by Lee were using aging ECRM film boxes.

“We looked at CTP and the paybacks on it,” Van Strydonck said. “If you use a visible-light system or some of the others, because of the cost of the consumables, the paybacks aren’t real attractive.”

Van Strydonck said the variable number of current vendors in the CTP arena and the fact that companies are changing names and faces so quickly also factored into the decision to wait.

“It’s been our observation that in the technology there tends to become fewer vendors and better products if you wait a little bit,” he said. “We didn’t want to buy a whole bunch of orphans.”

Supplier upheaval, Van Strydonck said, is “our biggest fear.”

“That’s one of the whole issues with [vendors]. They’ll be whatever they are now, then they’ll have 47 hyphens a year from now and a lot of people will be sitting out there on hardware that probably won’t be supported anymore.”

After evaluating CTP, Van Strydonck said he believes ultraviolet will be the prevalent CTP technology, although it is still in its infancy.

“We’ll re-evaluate in a couple of years and we’ll have more Lee papers that didn’t get new equipment,” Van Strydonck said. “We just felt like there’s a lot of transitional technology out there in CTP and the paybacks aren’t very good with it. There’ll probably be fewer vendors and more attractive consumable pricing, particularly if thermal or UV — probably UV — becomes more practical.”

Filmsetter direction

All told, Lee purchased 28 filmsetters — 20 3850s and eight Accuset 1000s — from Agfa/Autologic. Van Strydonck said Lee was comfortable with an investment in film because the technology is well developed.

“Imagers are such a mature technology that you can buy them at a pretty favorable price,” he said. “They don’t require as many auxiliaries as CTP.”

Many of the former Howard-owned newspapers are still in the process of installing the new filmsetters and several locations have rolled them out.

Van Strydonck said although he feels CTP is the way to go, he is comfortable with the “conservative” technology choice made by Lee.

“We didn’t want to make 28 mistakes. We plan on working longer than these machines will run,” he joked. “We felt like buying some less expensive imagers was less risky and would be the wiser move. We bought all of those imagers for less than the cost of buying CTP for one location — you’re talking big dollars for CTP right now. Because we’ll need a lot of CTP units, we just think that waiting a little bit, we’ll make a much better buying decision. We think it will be a good move in a couple of years.”