High-Def Newsracks: Selling Print with Video

By: Jim Rosenberg It's been a quarter-century since USA Today first appeared in vending boxes that vaguely resembled a television set. Since then, TVs have changed ? and so have newsracks, which can now sport real video. Appearing on a high- definition flat screen, an eye-catching live news feed from a newspaper's Web site can promote single-copy sales and even take online subscriptions.

About 5 years ago, The New York Times ran a story about a local company that developed, among other things, video movie posters for theaters. Today, the same technology is helping sell the Times in major cities, where outlets "are thrilled with it," says Brian Sheehan, the Times' retail, educational, and corporate sales vice president. "It's a sporty unit ? not your old metal rack."

The Timestation Digital Newsrack provides the day's news highlights in text and images, with updates, breaking news, and advertising reaching readers/viewers faster than print or Web-based media, according to its developer, Thinking Pictures ? a managed service provider that owns, operates and maintains a network of displays and will develop interactive digital display systems for various venues and events. Secure broadband wireless connectivity and Smartcard readers can allow customers to select content, receive downloads, and perform transactions using a card, radio-frequency ID, or cell phone.

The challenge was finding a way to easily show a paper's range of stories when, unlike magazines, customers generally are not permitted to peruse newspapers, says Thinking Pictures President and co-founder Stephan Fitch. TDN, he adds, provides that randomized sampling in 60 to 90 seconds using proprietary software that "to some degree" is customizable.

Fitch hired a composer to write a score to accompany the content, knowing it would be brief and require appropriate transitions between stories. "We came up with an algorithm to accomplish that," he says.

At airports, convenience stores, and independent newsstands, the Times has about 50 units deployed throughout the country, the majority in the New York metro area, says Sheehan. While the Times plans to keep using them, their price and monthly maintenance fee are high, says Sheehan, who declines to disclose pricing.

"They're very nice to have" and offer "a lot of visibility," he says. But in at a time when everybody's watching every penny, he adds, "we just haven't been able to cost-justify taking this to the next level."

More recently, The Wall Street Journal began testing the video service. "We're just doing a trial with them right now," a spokeswoman says. "We have just a handful of them in a couple of key markets."

While negotiations proceed with newspapers in three other states and Washington, D.C., as well as with Singapore Press Holdings, Thinking Pictures is at work on something for the sidewalk newsstand, too: replacing those newspaper-nameplate paperweights with a low-power display that runs a ticker of news stories.