Düsseldorf, Germany – Drupa – 5 May 2004 – The Belgian Association of Newspaper Publishers (BVDU) and the Medibel+ Technical Committee have adopted nation-wide standards for delivering advertising materials to newspapers. The new standards will enable consistent colour for advertising in all titles, regardless of prepress systems (platesetter, workflow software, plates) and printing presses in use. Medibel+ worked with Agfa’s Colour Management Consultancy Service to achieve the standardisation. The resulting solution includes new standards for advertisement delivery. Advertisers and agencies no longer need to concern themselves with variables such as colour gamut or dot gain. Instead, they apply an ICC (International Colour Consortium) profile created by Agfa. The newspapers guarantee predictable and uniform dot gain and colour gamut for all titles based on that profile. New Revenue Streams for Newspapers. Although advertisers recognise that newspaper advertising offers the benefits of timeliness, impact, coverage and targeted circulation, they require colour consistency across titles for major nation-wide campaigns. The BVDU hopes to increase advertising revenues with the new solution. “We consider it our mission to help newspaper publishers compete against new media and prove that print remains a communications media of choice,” said Agfa’s vice president of Imaging Solutions, Jan Van Daele. “We are proud to have achieved this demonstration of the Power of Print in partnership with BVDU.” “Agfa’s Expert Services team helped us make the best choices for colour management and printing. They understood the importance of reliable colour production and the benefits newspaper publishers can gain from having the ability to provide consistent colour across all titles,” said Patrick Bosmans, project manager, colour management systems for BVDU/Medibel+. The new standards took effect on 3 May 2004 and are open to future developments of prepress and printing technologies.