Petaluma Argus-Courier from Petaluma, California • Page 30

18A ARGUS-COURIER. Pttalumo, Saturday, April 20, 1985 1. 1 i LJ I i flfk 1 1 PIP owners with glistening new equipment 1 Doug Brown Ed Kissam at Channel 22's new office in Rohnert Park Printers (From preceding pogo) He and his family returned to the Bay Area, where most of his relatives live. Looking around for work, a family friend who owns PIP enterprises south of San Francisco interested Rhodes in a franchise. He worked in one of the shops for six months as manager.

That, plus training by PIP before he opened his own store, was Rhodes only experience in printing when he went into business for himself. That was Vk years ago. Today he can show two company awards for his abilities and can turn out some jobs in three minutes. He can do it in black and white or in color, though the shop is not set up to do four-color photo processes. The jobs in Rhodes' store are done on only a few machines, among the most current in the business.

Most of them look like computers, clean metal covers with many buttons and no ink in sight. And most of them contain computerized, electronic elements. One device is fed stacks of paper and within seconds it drops them, printed, in collated rows needing only to be fastened together. The printer does it with buttons. Should something go wrong with the machine, flashing lights inside show where the problem is located.

A small rotary press spins nearby, the closest connection to traditional printing. But it prints much faster than this kind used to, and it does it with off-set methods, not type. A sheet of photo-sensitive paper, not metal as with newspaper pre.shcs, picks up ink from rollers and deposits it in a photo-image pattern on another roller. Sheets of paper contacting this roller are printed with the image. And, there is a word processing computer on which copy can be written in the shop if the customer hasn't been able to have it transcribed from typewritten or hand-written paper.

Petalumans, unlike those in some areas, he notes, like to use a lot of color and fancy art on coated stock, slick heavier paper. Rhodes' customers are as diverse as industrial park plants and individual people, youth sports teams, clubs, schools, retail shop proprietors and others. A much older Petaluma printing business is House of Printing. This Lakeville Street establishment has been running off printed items for Petalumans for almost 20 years under the hand of owner Steve Olmsted. Unlike Rhodes, Olmsted had targeted the business as his work from the beginning, learning printing while in college at Cal He worked in the "back shop" of the Argus-Courier, helping to make up the daily newspaper's pages.

He later was the paper's city editor until it was sold by the Olmsted family. After a six-month stint with Petaluma Printing, Olmsted purchased a Santa Rosa print shop, moving it to a Petaluma Boulevard site a year later. He then moved his business to the Lakeville Street location it presently occupies. He notes the business has changed a lot since his college training. Composing on a computer rather than a linotype is one of the greatest changes.

Olmsted has two letter presses, which he uses mostly for making 0 Broadcasting Of the smaller instant press companies, he says, "they're great for 100 to 500 copies," and can handle those size runs more economically than his shop can. Mostly equipped for large numbers of copies, it costs him more to set up a job than the instant printers do. Olmsted can produce more copies of documents economically over the long run. He feels he can turn out 5,000 copies of a job cheaper than the instant printers. Olmsted is still in the newspaper business, but now it's school papers that he prints.

He also puts out newsletters and numerous forms and other documents for businesses, some manufacturing companies, brochures, letterheads, statements, fliers and similar materials. Olmsted says he's got "a lot of ink in the blood." It's a physical change that's endemic to the trade, and one which most find impossible to filter out. Television and stereos may seem to have swept the field, but the printed paper is as strong as ever in Petaluma. perforations and impressing fold lines in paper forms. Most of the work he does is with his off-set equipment.

And he, too, has a word processing computer that sets type, and 15 fonts of type to choose from. The shop has a Heidelberg press, which Olmsted calls "the Cadillac of presses," and a six-color press, as well as a smaller press. He can print 4,000 individual sheets an hour on his larger machines and more on the smaller ones. "This is a complete shop," Olmsted says, with the equipment to do all phases of finished printing jobs. He credits the proliferation of color to the fact there are more graphic artists working these days.

They design work for customers and put in a lot of color and multiple colors, which have to be produced on the press. He sees increasing use of photographs in printed material, this also boosted by the off-set presses that make picture reproduction easier and cheaper. The climb to the top was made possible, Farris said, because the station "wanted to find out what would make us the best station in the world." KZST determined the way to make that happen is "to ask our listeners let them tell us." As the top-rated station, Farris said KZST supplies its own competition. "We try to get better than we were yesterday." And while KZST "does things differently" than other stations in the area, Farris said there is a thread that connects people involved in radio. "The magic is still there.

You can still create pictures and have fun." (From preceding page). Compared to McLaurin, Jim Meyers is a newcomer to Sonoma County radio. The general manager and part-owner of KPLS in Santa Rosa, and formerly with KRON-TV and radio station KSFO in San Francisco, Meyers became associated with the local country-western music station fairly recently. He been here long enough, though, to realize that "this is a strong radio market it is a growth area." Being the only station in the North Bay provides KPLS with "something that is salable," he said, adding the station is becoming more involved in community-centered programming. According to Meyers, the ability of various media to thrive in a community is related to the growing perception that "media-mixing and judicious use of all media is important to be successful in business." The future success of KPLS is linked, he said, to the station's ability to "broaden its base" and provide better overall local coverage than competing San Francisco-based country stations.

Change has already been pivotal in the success of another Santa Rosa radio station KZST-FM. Operations manager Brent Far-ris said KZST went on the air 13 years ago amid laughter by AM stations, which were skeptical about the chances of an FM station. Since then, he said, the station has been transformed from a "beautiful music" format into one concentrating on adult contemporary music. It is also rated the No. 1 station in the county.

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Is proud to announce the fastest, biggest, best printing technology available. Collated copies, manuals, briefs, scripts; one or two sides. Bindery available. I'-V" -if A -V Pip Your business Friends We also do Blueprints, Sepias and High Quality Printing. Bill and Sherry Rhodes, owners "What they want When they want it!" Petaluma's Award Winning Printer.

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