Response to our annual Nexpo survey was down substantially this year, a result most likely due to the fact that we asked readers to reply right after the holidays in order to meet our publication deadline.

That’s one of the consequences, albeit a minor one perhaps, stemming from the Newspaper Association of America’s move to shift Nexpo from its traditional early summer timeframe to early spring, specifically March 19-22, in Dallas.

Low response notwithstanding, 75 percent of those replying said they plan to attend Nexpo, mirroring our 2004 survey.

Of those not attending, about half said their budgets wouldn’t permit it. The remainder said this year’s Nexpo was too soon after last year’s show, held in June in Washington, D.C. One reason NAA said it elected to move Nexpo to an earlier time slot was to capture newspapers’ travel budgets before they are drawn down.

Although our sample size is hardly reflective of the industry at large, the earlier Nexpo could indeed hurt attendance at America East.

More than 60 percent of respondents who said they ordinarily attend the Hershey, Pa., regional show said they would not attend the conference this year because of the earlier Nexpo time slot.

Shopping in Dallas

Of those attending Nexpo this year, computer-to-plate, postpress and press technologies ranked a close 1-2-3 in the products they said they wanted to evaluate.

That response differed slightly from what these potential attendees said were the technology areas they’d like to address at their own facility, where press technologies ranked first, followed by CTP and postpress.  

The biggest technology issues they face, however, continue to be system integration and management, an area managers say they grapple with as they attempt to stitch various production systems together.

Circulation management was not considered a large issue, respondents say, despite all of the controversy surrounding certain publishers’ circulation practices in 2004.