Yes, there are plenty applications that can be considered alternatives to Announcements. Based on its official description, Announcements was an application that allowed you to create greeting cards. The program isn't developed anymore and sold to Broderbund. They've released other applications that can be used instead of Announcements. The new software is called The Print Shop Deluxe and it's a powerful application that allows you to work with graphic resources to create greeting cards, texts, fancy drawings, etc.
You can check it on the official website: http://www.broderbund.com/p-145-the-print-shop-231-deluxe.aspx