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Star hires consultant to assess ad ratesmay adjust some of the rates it charges advertisers next year as the newspaper undergoes a redesign and opens its downtown printing press plant.Publisher Mac Tully said The Star hired consulting firm K Group Inc. of Phoenix in the fall to examine whether the prices it charges for advertising jibe with its current advertising volume."What we would look at with the K Group is in 2006 how we would restructure our rate card so we wouldn't be a little out of date," Tully said. Tully said The Star won't necessarily follow through on all of the consulting firm's recommendations, some of which he said are forthcoming. According to a bio on the Internet, K Group President Jerry Kackley specializes in newspaper strategic pricing, circulation and sales initiatives, and has consulted the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group.Cecilia Riegel, media director for Lawrence advertising agency Callahan Creek, said her contacts at The Star told her to expect some fluctuation in rates. "My first question was are they going up, which is what I always assume, and I was told, 'not necessarily,'" she said. Tully said The Star has not announced any advertising rate reductions. The newspaper, he said, traditionally adjusts its advertising rates in August. Tully said The Star's recent advertising performance is not the main reason it is working with K Group. "We're doing a redesign next year, and that's a good time to look at these changes," Tully said. The Star's parent company, Knight Ridder Inc. (NYSE: KRI), described the newspaper's overall advertising revenue as "soft" and its classified ad revenue as "flat" in October. The Star ran 183,600 six-column inches of full-run advertising in October, down 8.5 percent from the 200,600 inches for the same month in 2004, Knight Ridder said. For the year through October, The Star's advertising volume decreased 1.5 percent from the same period last year.Knight Ridder has faced pressure recently for what some large shareholders have termed limited revenue growth. In November, the San Jose, Calif., company said it will consider a possible sale to increase its value to shareholders.
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