Dallas Morning News radio spots transmitted via new technology p. 21

By: M.L. Stein Produced in San Francisco, then sent sameday to Dallas sp.

RADIO PRODUCER NICK Alexander is up at three o'clock every morning to get a special delivery at his home of the Dallas Morning News. He then starts his work day.
By 4:30 a.m., he has skimmed the paper and written, recorded and mixed a radio spot on its content for distribution to eight local stations.
To speed the process, the Morning News and Alexander are using a new technology developed by Digital Generation Systems.
Alexander has a DGS terminal in his home, where he creates the spot following guidelines given him by the newspaper. The recording is transmitted simultaneously to the radio stations, which also have DGS terminals to receive the commercial.
Morning News vice president of marketing Barbara Van Pelt said the system is much quicker and more efficient than Alexander's former method. Previously, he fed his spots to one radio station which then used 20 phone lines to transmit them to the other stations.
"We're also getting a better quality spot because Nick has more time to concentrate on producing it and spends less time in sending," she added.
Van Pelt said the only problem that arose over the new delivery system was that some stations forgot to change the spots for the next day's broadcast. "But we fixed that up and all our spots are timely," she reported.
Van Pelt said Alexander's ads are based on the paper's guidelines, which rely largely on preferences related by focus groups.
"We found that single-copy buyers prefer news and information of practical, utilitarian value, stuff that makes their lives better," she explained. Thus, the spots often are not plucked from the front page but from inside features.
San Francisco-based DGS operates a digital multimedia network for distribution of high-quality audio, video, fax and graphics to media industries.
?( Radio producer Nick Alexander records a radio spot for the Dallas Morning News from his home in San Francisco. He then transmits the spot to eight Dallas radio stations.) [Photo & ID]