Media Information Solutions
Home
MIS in focus
Products and services
Partners
News
Customers
Careers at MiS
Contact us
XServe Campaign
Copyright MIS 2025
Site design: Hands-on associates

The Stage Newspaper
Customer requirements
  • Continue to publish on the Macintosh platform
  • Improve productivity - produce more ads in less time to beat deadlines
  • Secure workflow improvements
  • Reduce production costs
  • Utilise the internet to ensure the widest possible readership is reached
The MIS solution
  • Utilise best-of-breed Apple technologies
  • Mobilise strategic partners to build cabling and communications infrastructure
  • Partner with The Stage to meet long term IT objectives within the context of the newspaper production schedules
  • Provide highly-focused support to ensure business objectives and press deadlines are met
Technical benefits
  • MIS set up NetBoot to support 30 users across two departments to deliver maximum flexibility and resilience in the server function
  • The Xserve also provides email services via OS X Mail for all users with SquirrelMail providing web mail functionality
  • Continued user satisfaction by implementing a Macintosh based system
Business benefits
  • Reduced production costs
  • Ability to book more adverts and better plan space availability
  • Reduced risk of publication or process errors
  • Less work required to repurpose content to web
  • Better workflow management
  • Less pressure on personnel to achieve short deadlines
  • Increased profitability
Customer information
For more information about our customer please visit: www.thestage.co.uk/stage125
Download this case study
You will need a recent version of Acrobat Reader to view this case study.

The Stage Newspaper has been publishing its trade weekly for the entertainment world for the last 125 years. With its features pages, top tips for auditions, recruitment pages and general backstage 'news', The Stage has been the springboard for the career of many well known actors and comedians over the years. Ownership of The Stage still remains with the founding family.

The situation

The Stage has worked with MIS since its inception in February 1997, having worked with John Wilkin, MIS MD, for some years prior to this. The Stage continues to outsource its IT function to MIS.
As part of a structured development project, The Stage recognised the need to implement an advert booking system with a page composition and management function. This would achieve significant cost and operational efficiencies through increased productivity (producing more ads in less time), improved workflows and decreased production costs.

The MIS solution

The first rule that MIS had to adhere to was that any proposed solution had to be run on the Apple Macintosh platform, since the top to bottom culture at The Stage is rooted in Macintosh.
AdManager Pro, the Macintosh-based newspaper advertising software from BaseView, and its associated production products (targeted at regional and weekly newspaper publishers) were identified as the perfect solution for The Stage. MIS' challenge was to mobilise its strategic partners to supply and install the best IT infrastructure to support the chosen software.
MIS' specific role was to supply the file server and desktop systems. Working with strategic cabling partners, Lynx Data Cabling, MIS managed the cabling infrastructure installation before pre-building the Macintosh systems to enable the BaseView partner to install and configure the software elements:
  • AdManager (ad booking software)
  • AdForce (ad layout software)
  • Catapult (ad production software)
  • Phrasea (archiving product)
The first edition of the newspaper to be published using BaseView on the new systems was published less than 10 weeks from finalising the project plans.
The MIS technical team participated in the BaseView training programme with The Stage personnel to ensure that MIS was best placed to provide the ongoing support for the newspaper production.

The future

Since the successful installation of the advertising software, MIS has worked with The Stage to upgrade their IT systems to OS X. This project has been completed to facilitate the implementation of the BaseView editorial system, News Edit Pro and IQ Server. This involved another upgrade of 18 desktop stations; a combination of G5, iBooks and iMacs. IQ Server is running on an Xserve using Apple's storage system, Xraid, to provide a highly fault tolerant storage facility.
To further increase flexibility and resilience in the systems, MIS set up NetBoot to support over 30 users in two departments. The Xserve also provides email services via OS X Mail for all users, with SquirrelMail providing web mail functionality.
With The Stage now repurposing content for publication on the web, the newspaper has successfully achieved a very high quality publication in both the traditional print medium and the modern online version.
“It has been many years since The Stage bought its first Macintosh IIci from John Wilkin. From that day, John, and MIS, have been responsible for project scoping, hardware and software recommendations, installation and maintenance of the advanced IT network that is in place at The Stage today.
This has been a true partnership and MIS are regarded as an integral part of The Stage team.”
Marcus Collingbourne
Advertisement and Events Manager
The Stage Newspaper Limted