|
| April Fool's Day Special Report: |
Government working on print overcapacity problem April 1, 2003 -- Industry associations and major family print businesses have been pleased with the progress of a major bill that can finally remove overcapacity from the printing business. Like family farms, some printing companies will be paid not to print, raising print prices to levels at which family print businesses will be able to survive. "Everybody knows that printing is a family business," said Preston Gravis, a Texas sheetfed printer. "Our industry is under serious pressure. The government has subsidized the development of the Internet to the detriment of our industry. Now they have to do something to fix it." The justification for the price supports and subsidies is that printing predated the American Revolution and played a key role in the nation's history. Senators and representatives were constantly reminded of the role of Ben Franklin in both printing and our nation's formation. Overcapacity had been a blight on the market for many years. It was so bad that some printers could not meet their lease payments and would have to go out of business or "sell to one of those heartless multinational consolidators," said one Midwestern printer. It was rumored that a special televised event, "Print Aid," was going to be run in the summer of 2003, and would be hosted by Willie Nelson. In light of the ravages of the Internet on the industry, all donations would have to be mailed, as a protest of e-commerce. One of the proposed plans, turned down in the House of Representatives' committee meetings, included a provision that commercial printers would be hired by the Treasury Department to, of all things, print money. Treasury officials said that printers would have to be licensed to print money. An industry spokesman, who refused to be identified, said that the idea that "owning a print shop was a license to print money" might be an alien concept to some printers today. But years ago it was thought that some printers had actually uttered that phrase at industry cocktail parties. "But that was in the eighties," he mused, "when those platemakers were bragging about their business as ‘scanning for dollars'." Part of the final legislation, now in House-Senate conference committee, is a provision that printers who are being paid not to print would still have to buy new equipment, even if they did not need it. It was felt that the industry had a long tradition of this behavior, and changing it would cause yet more serious disruptions to the industry, and undermine its culture. Manufacturers were delighted at this prospect, but were concerned that purveyors of used and gray market equipment might muddle the debate on this provision with their heavy lobbying efforts, funded by overseas contributors. - Back to the April Fool's Home Page Special Note: All these stories are presented in the true spirit of April Fool's Day. None of these stories are true, nor are they intended to reflect the strategy and intent of any real person or company. Our purpose with the April Fool's Edition is to elicit a smile, and we hope you will enjoy our spoof! We are an Equal Opportunity Offender: Our contributors name many industry companies in their stories, none of which should be taken seriously. Please offer your feedback. This was a collective effort by many of our contributors. We decided a universal byline was best since so many helped with each story. Thanks to Gail Nickel-Kailing, Molly Joss, Frank Romano, Cary Sherburne, CAP Ventures, Bill Farquharson, Noel Ward, John Dunn, Paul White, Dr. Joe Webb, Robert FitzPatrick, Steve Aranoff, Vince Marini, Jeremy Smith, John Zarwan |
Latest Videos
Susan Moore, President of DPI on the success of Dscoop-
Peter Schaefer shares a recent M&A transaction case study - This Week with Frank Romano: Frank's shares his mail and invents the iPad!
Printing Industry Jobs
- Solutions Finishing and Controls Engineer at Hewlett Packard in Corvallis, OR
- Digital Indigo Press Operator at O'Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles, CA
- Managed Print Services Sales Executive at Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa
- Key Accounts Technical Color Mgmt Specialist at GMG Americas in Hingham, MA
- Account Manager - Commercial Sales at NewPage Corporation in Southeast ( Charlotte, Atlanta, Jacksonville )
Economics and Research Center
Blog
Industry Snapshot
The Industry Snapshot is a collection of regularly updated industry data. The snapshot includes Industry Capacity, Capacity utilization, Printing Shipments, employment, and other and various measures of business activity.
Audio Chart
-
As The Industry Churns
-
Broadband hours and the statistical relationship with printing volumes
-
Year/Year US Gross Domestic Product
-
Newspaper Industry Woes Not Being Cured By Online Revenues
-
Commerical Printing and Services Shipments 2003-2015
-
Number of US Commercial Printing and Print Services Establishments 2003-2015
-
Change In Number Of Employees For Commerical Printing & Services
-
Canada's Printing Industry as a Percentage of GDP
-
September 2009 Commercial Printing Shipments
-
Use of Social Media Services by Commercial Printers by employee size
- Weekly Audio Chart Archive »
Popular Stories from Last Week
(10) RR Donnelley Wins $375 Million Deal
(9) Schreier on the status of the offset market
(8) Investors pull out or Press-sense
(7) Go where the printing is!
(6) HP intros new VDP solution
(5) Reinventing Your Business
(4) Packaging: Analog-to-Digital Opportunity
(3) January 2010 Printing Shipments
(2) EFI product auction at Connect
(1) Weathering the Employment and Printing Shipments Data
Become a MemberJoin the thousands of printing executives who are already part of the WhatTheyThink Community. |
|||
|
Log in or register to access your WhatTheyThink Account Help & Member Center |
About |
WhatTheyThink Services |
WhatTheyThink Network |
Copyright © 2010 WhatTheyThink. All Rights Reserved