Tribune Integrates SCS Classified Pagination with CCI AdDesk Sales

By: E&P Staff This summer, with support staff from CCI Europe and Software Consulting Services, LLC, Nazareth, Pa., The Sun, in Baltimore, produced its first classified product using CCI AdDesk Sales and SCS/ClassPag.

Three years ago, Tribune Co. sought classified pagination that would seamlessly integrate with AdDesk Sales. Its flagship Chicago Tribune and The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa., already used SCS/ClassPag, and SCS committed to interfacing to various existing front-end systems at Tribune's 11 dailies (including support for four legacy systems before moving to AdDesk Sales). The phased approach, according to SCS, allowed full classified pagination redundancy and less anxiety in changing to AdDesk Sales.

Intermediate interfaces to existing front ends were a challenge. Two sites used different versions of one system, and neither could output EPS images of liner ads for ClassPag to place. So that billing information would be correct, SCS recomposed each ad exactly from raw, marked-up text - without benefit of an up-to-date composition manual, help from the original vendor, or documentation for custom composition commands.

Using classified dumps of raw text, each paper's format library, font library, printed copies of the corresponding classified sections, and cooperation of the papers' IT staffs, SCS said it reverse engineered both versions of the legacy composition engine.

Varying widely in their indexing, sort sequences, display ad stacking and header use, each paper nevertheless kept its section's look and feel. Some fine-tuning of SCS/ClassPag features was done at each site. (Distribution of frequent SCS/ClassPag builds allows each customer to benefit from the enhancements of others.) More requirements surfaced during rollout. All papers had to renumber classifications to conform to a common scheme. SCS had to support a CCI order-entry migration strategy to take ads from both legacy and CCI systems for 30 days.

Tribune standardized on ClassPag as what SCS calls "a stable target for AdDesk Sales output." The Sun, in Baltimore, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel went live with SCS/ClassPag in 2005; Newsday, Melville, N.Y., The Los Angeles Times and Hartford (Conn.) Courant went live this year. The final installation in Southern Connecticut is scheduled for January. SCS also recently supported AdDesk Sales implementations in Orlando and Chicago.