KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Almost 18 months after it kicked off its new plant downtown, The Kansas City Star is reaping higher ad revenues and almost $1 million in new commercial printing, officials said.

Speaking at this year’s International Newspaper Group meeting here, Peter Ricker, The Star’s vice president of advertising, said retail advertising color revenue more than doubled since the plant went into operation last year (see Newspapers & Technology, June 2006).

Revenues for classified ads and other placements doubled, he said.

Color is a driving force. According to a study conducted by The Star, almost 70 percent of consumers polled said color was important, with 72 percent citing color photography as being particularly critical.

Photo: Newspapers & Technology
Randy Waters, vice president of production at
The Kansas City Star, said the paper’s new plant was
“worth the struggle.”
 

Simplify rates

On the business side, Ricker said the daily was able to simplify its ad rates, moving from 45,000 different rates to 4,500 since the paper’s four Koenig & Bauer AG Commander presses went on-edition.

Commercial revenues are also blossoming, fueled by the publication of an alternative weekly, advertising inserts and other runs.

Equally important, readers like the new Star, said Chris Christian, vice president of circulation. Circulation, he said, “rebounded after the redesign” while daily readership remained stable in a market where many other metro dailies lost ground.

“Total print readership is now higher than at the turn of the century” in 1999, he said, and more than 80 percent of readers approved of The Star’s new look.

Randy Waters, The Star’s vice president of production, said the $199 million plant was “worth the struggle” despite such challenges as four vendors filing for bankruptcy mid-project, minor vandalism and a last-second decision to reduce the web widths of the presses from 50 inches to 48 inches.

“There are a lot of benefits,” he said, citing such upgrades as automated roll handling, pallet tracking and software that let managers oversee various operations more efficiently.

In addition to the KBA Commander presses, the 420,000-square-foot facility boasts more than 80,000 square feet of postproduction space. The Star purchased four 30-head SLS-3000 inserters from Muller Martini Mailroom Systems Inc. to anchor postproduction, in addition to 20 500 stackers from Quipp Systems Inc. and a bundle conveyor and four palletizing systems from Schur Packaging Inc. An HK Systems ASRS with 5,300 storage positions houses newsprint rolls and inserts.

On the prepress side, five lines of Glunz & Jensen K&F Inc. ProVision Alliance benders and conveyor system handle plate production from four Agfa Advantage violet computer-to-plate systems.

Glunz & Jensen K&F’s pre- and post-bend conveyors, including a vertical post-bend conveyor system, deliver plates as needed.

Ferag supplied postpress conveyors and UTR gripper conveyors, which stretch in some cases to more than 1 mile in length before ending in 24 stacker positions.

Production executives at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., and USA Today, meantime, used ING to showcase steps they are taking to improve operations and attract new revenues.

The Plain Dealer, for example, reduced downtime and cut emergency repairs through the use of a computerized maintenance management system. The software, from Mapcon Technologies Inc., went live in 2005, said Al Moses, reliability engineer. “We needed to be more aggressive so that we would be proactive,” he said. In the two years the app has been in use, emergency repair calls have fallen from 65 percent to 50 percent while preventive maintenance increased from 10 percent to 25 percent.

USA Today Production Vice President Ken Kirkhart said the paper is exploring how it can reap additional revenues through the use of such technologies as scented adhesive labels and inks.

The paper is already applying scented labels for an advertiser that evokes the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It’s also evaluating the use of scented inks on an ad page  — something the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and Los Angeles Times have already done (see Newspapers & Technology, October 2007).

Other possible ideas USA Today is considering: fluorescent inks, metallic inks and specialty paper that is either semi-transparent or much brighter than standard newsprint

Outside printing

Papers are also zeroing in on semi-commercial printing, a business that requires particular attention, said Peg Schmitz, vice president of operations at Color Web Printers, a unit of Gazette Communications in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“You won’t know your profit if you don’t know your cost,” she said. “Commercial printing does not have the higher margins that most newspaper projects do,” adding that commercial profits can run as low as 5 percent.

To capitalize on commercial printing, newspapers have to ensure that staff is well trained, that an adequate backup and recovery system is in place and that cost and accounting procedures reflect the particular nature of the business, she said.

“In some of our research we found that newspapers that also do commercial printing  range greatly in their views of what overhead costs need to be accounted for and covered.”

Next year’s ING will be held at Cox Target Media Inc.’s Valpak printing plant in St. Petersburg, Fla.