Media: Catching Up With The Web

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September 22, 1997

MEDIA:
Catching Up With The Web

Media outlets try to cope with the growth of the Internet
By Monua Janah
IW 500 slug he media industry is being transformed by electronic delivery, raising new possibilities and threatening old ways of doing business. IT executives at these companies not only are struggling to integrate new technology with existing infrastructures, but they must also keep up with the relentless stream of often inadequately tested Internet products, and find and hone talent.
For newspaper publishers, the World Wide Web poses a special chall enge in terms of figuring out a business model for Web-based publishing and finding IT staff and resources for Web sites. Newspaper companies are pursuing different strategies. Some, such as Gannett Co. in Arlington, Va., have partnered with other media companies to create a separate company that handles all the technology issues related to Internet offerings.
For cable-TV companies, the challenge is more central to their core business. IT executives at these companies are trying to anticipate whatever opportunities may arise in digital and interactive businesses by building scalable architectures that can be added to incrementally.
Three publishing holding companies-Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and Landmark Publications-jointly own InfiNet, a Norfolk, Va., firm that provides Internet access and Web hosting services, mostly for the publishing industry.
Gannett, which owns TV stations, radio stations, and a cable-TV operation, is best known for its newspapers, including the national USA Today , l arge urban papers such as the Detroit News , and smaller rural papers.
"We want to get a presence for each of our newspapers out on the Web," says Mark Morneau, Gannett's VP of systems. "But it's more than just getting the newspaper content out on the Web, which adds little value for readers and advertisers. Instead, the newspapers are developing Web sites and packaging the information so that it's interesting to the local market-and often to a broader audience."
Gannett's newspaper Web sites carry localized interactive content in addition to reproduced print content. For instance, Morneau says, Gannett's paper in Brevard County, Fla., has a Web site with a feature called Space Online, which provides interactive information about the space program at Cape Canaveral. Gannett's Reno, Nev., paper's site offers information about gambling, tourism, and skiing.
"It wouldn't be easy or efficient for us to recreate the Web site technology infrastructure in every property that we have," Morneau s ays. "We use InfiNet for their expertise, which helps newspapers focus on the reader's and advertiser's interests and not get hung up on installing and supporting technology."
InfiNet's Web site runs on Digital Equipment Alpha servers. Netscape Communications' Web publishing software and Open Market's electronic commerce products are the main software used to create and maintain the Web packages. InfiNet uses an Oracle Systems Parallel Server, as well as a relational database management system from Informix Corp. The servers connect to Digital GigaSwitches, which are very high-end, scalable switches widely used for Internet access, on a fully redundant FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) network ring. InfiNet provides multiple T3 (45 Mbps) lines for Net access.
Private-Label Net Access
Among the services InfiNet provides to its newspaper and TV station clients is what InfiNet CEO Robert Gilbert calls "private-label Internet access." Under this program, the Miami Herald, for example, se lls Internet access to its readers with some features specific to the Herald. But the newspaper doesn't actually have to provide the connectivity itself. InfiNet takes care of the phone-line access, the modem pool, and the billing. "All they have to do is market it," Gilbert says.
In addition, InfiNet provides round-the-clock support, and it has developed custom applications for billing consumers and advertisers. "Though people trivialize billing, it's one of our biggest differentiators," Gilbert says. "It's becoming increasingly important as companies try to make money on the Web. What you charge doesn't have to be dollars, it can be credits. They can get into very small denominations, and it can be very complex tracking them."
InfiNet's billing capabilities track transactions, aggregate charges to consumer credit cards, and provide revenue splits among affiliates and service providers.
The New York Times Co. has created a unit, the New York Times Electronic Media Co., to handle its Web site and the Times Co.'s site on America Online. The unit provides the IT infrastructure and support for the sites, and helps develop fresh forms of interactive content. Examples are a Web site devoted to books, which features audio interviews and authors' readings of their books, and the CyberTimes section of the Web site, which includes simulations and original content. "We want the medium to be illustrative of the content, and we want to develop a sense of community among visitors to the sites," says Steve Luciani, the unit's chief technical officer.
Testing Ground
The Times currently charges advertisers per impression, each time the ad is delivered to an end-user's browser. The rate is $30 per 1,000 impressions, a fee that generates "barely enough" ad revenue, Luciani admits. "But right now, the Web is a test ground for everybody," he adds. "There will be a shakeout. Lots of sites will turn to the subscription model, and some sites will close down, allowing remaining sites to get more advertising."
The Times Co.'s Web servers are Sun Ultra Enterprise II machines, with a Netscape publishing system on the front end. The Netscape system taps an Oracle database, running on a Sun Ultra Enterprise 4000 server, that holds user-registration information and other data.
But the Times Co. had to develop its own custom tools for migrating print content to its electronic sites. "When we started planning, there were no shrink-wrapped production tools," Luciani says. "We developed our own, which was a big pain in the neck, but we did it. We continue to look, and we haven't found any."
The problem, he says, is that off-the-shelf products "assume you're starting from scratch, that there's no body of content you're moving from," Luciani says. "Our legacy system [for reporters and editors] is Atex, and our classified-ads systems are homegrown. We've still had to do translations between these proprietary systems and shrink-wrapped tools."
Another problem with Web products, Luciani says, is that they've oft en been rushed to market. "All the companies are trying to one-up each other with new releases," he says, "and it's tempting to upgrade to the new release for new features. But then you find that two things that used to work in the old version are now broken. I'm not saying any one company is to blame. It's an industry problem, brought on by the ridiculously fast product cycle."
Innovative middleware is starting to be developed to allow integration of data from legacy systems. Washington Post Co. is a minority investor in and customer of Junglee Corp., a Sunnyvale, Calif., startup that lets users of its Canopy software integrate data from a variety of sources into a so-called virtual database.
Growing Pool
The Post Co. uses Canopy for its classified-ads Web page, initially for employment ads, and plans to expand its use to other ad categories. Canopy integrates data from several sources-such as flat files of ads from the Post's own SII (System Integrators Inc.) legacy classified-ad system and additional job listings from its advertisers' Web pages-into an Oracle database. As a result, the actual pool of job ads that end users can see grows exponentially.
"We faced the problem of many large IS shops," says Ralph Terkowitz, the Post Co.'s VP of technology. "We had a legacy system, but also a brand-new application for which the existing legacy information was very valuable. We needed to be able to create something new. Junglee helped us to bridge that very, very rapidly."
Activity on the Post Co.'s classifieds Web page has increased by about a factor of 10 since the paper deployed Canopy, and advertisers are satisfied with responses, Terkowitz says.
Cable-TV companies, meanwhile, are struggling to lay out a viable IT architecture. Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable-TV company, earlier this year completed the third and fourth stages of a four-stage strategy for putting in place a scalable, flexible IT infrastructure to meet its current needs and to let it enter digit al-media markets as opportunities present themselves.
Cable-Ready
The delivery system consists of the SummiTrak subscriber management system, a marketing data warehouse, a global network, and an intranet, says Sadie Decker, CIO and senior VP of advanced IT at TCI, in Englewood, Colo. SummiTrak, completed in July, is a distributed Sybase database that stores inventory, billing, pay-per-view, and customer-care data. SummiTrak, which cost more than $100 million to build, is the largest such system for the cable industry, using more than 3 million lines of code.
In addition, TCI runs a huge Sybase data warehouse that contains information about customers and product sales. "We get daily updates and move 220 million records every night," says Decker.
TCI's intranet, called Informi, was developed in-house using Netscape's publishing software. Informi, completed early this year, takes data from the warehouse and SummiTrak and summarizes it daily for TCI management.
Rounding out TCI's IT i nvestments is a high-speed network, based on Cisco Systems and 3Com routers, Aspex data switches, and Rolm telephone switches. It ties together the company's call centers and cable head-ends across the country and provides connectivity at TCI offices in Latin America, the United Kingdom, and Japan. TCI believes this network will provide a reservoir of bandwidth for future applications that integrate voice and data.
Core Changes For Newspapers
Newspapers are also revamping their core systems by phasing out aging, proprietary versions used by reporters and editors in favor of client-server systems. Reporters today must interact not just with the editorial system, but also with databases and other online resources, says Gannett's Morneau. Gannett's largest newspapers, such as USA Today and the Detroit News , are replacing dumb terminals with PCs.
Gannett seeks to expand the capabilities of its paper and electronic text archives to include the ability to digitally store all the in formation content in its newspapers, including photos, drawings, and advertisements. A subsidiary called Gannett Media Technologies International in Cincinnati markets a multimedia archive developed by Digital Collections, a German company. The two companies are testing a version of this archive, accessed by a Web browser, that can incorporate photos, sound, video, and other multimedia content.
For noneditorial business operations, Gannett's predominant system is an IBM AS/400, with some Novell NetWare servers and a growing number of Microsoft Windows NT servers for file-and-print and office applications. The plan is to migrate the NetWare servers to NT, except where there are NetWare-dependent applications such as the current version of the Restrac system, which is used for recruiting newspaper staff.
Sticking With AS/400
Gannett has no plans to replace the AS/400s. "In terms of an office server, our direction is NT," Morneau says. "In terms of core applications [circulation, advertising, and marketing], we are impressed with the AS/400. It's an excellent investment, and, as far as we can see for coming years, it will continue to be."
One of the AS/400's attractions, Morneau says, is that it's integrated with IBM's relational database, DB2. "We are able to implement and use the database much more easily than when we have to use Oracle, Sybase, or SQL Server on a Unix, NetWare or NT platform," he says. As Gannett rebuilds its core business applications using the Lansa development tool, it's integrating the AS/400 and NT environments.
Finding and nurturing talent is also a top priority for media industry IT executives. "It's a challenge to keep people skilled when there's so much happening," Morneau says. "There's a need to stay fresh and up-to-date without chasing fads. I see many companies chasing fads. CIOs come in and want to throw out the infrastructure, ignoring the investment in people. That's a big mistake."

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