Football tabs

Local shop has fallen on hard times - I think the sports staff is half of what it was 10 years ago - but they still do a dedicated preview. Haven't seen a tab format in recent years but it's usually a couple extra sections. Bunch of big photos done in an almost magazine cover style, a couple big time features and then a team preview for each school.

Appears to sell well. Decent number of ads. And it looks good. So kudos to them. I think if it's of value like that, you should do it, especially in those areas where high school football is a big part of the community.

 

I always dreaded the lead-up to football tab time, but for whatever dumb reason, I seemed to actually enjoy putting it together. Fortunately, I worked with people willing to go beyond the standard "team photo, 12-inch story on the team's best player" template.

 

This will be the first year we will not be publishing a tab and a good amount of readers are upset that we won't do it. We had a massive one at my last shop. It took a ton of hours and effort to produce, but it was highly satisfying to put out great work that people enjoyed.

 

The papers in my area still produce broadsheet special football sections and do a good job with them -- although, like most sections in the paper, they're about half as large as they were 10 years ago.

At my former paper, I was the lead copy editor on the football section several times in the late '90s and remember what a massive undertaking it was. My memories are fuzzy, but I think it hit 40 pages a few times, covering everything from preps to the NFL. It was flattering to be designated as the copy editor on those sections, but after the first day of editing I'd be asking myself what the hell I'd gotten into and wondering when the deluge of copy would end. There'd usually be an all-nighter or two as deadline approached. And readers did like it -- we'd start getting phone calls in early August asking when the section would appear.

 

Yes, I also request that you defend that proposition.

 

With organization and planning, you could do the same type of thing in the daily edition. Run a schedule showing the days each team's summary will appear. This way, you are not wasting huge amounts of paper, and you are promoting several daily editions, rather than just one.

You're still using staff time, but it's spread out in a more sensible fashion.

I realize this eliminates the chances for the ingeniously themed covers and other silliness, but we can't have it all.

 

We still do it but I'm not sure why. Our coverage area has shrunk to the point where we only cover two high schools that play football. And the ad sales have been shifted to the person who does classifieds. Why, I don't know.

Last year, I had a 12-page tab. Discounting the cover and that I make page two an agate page covering last year's standings and complete league schedules, to fill the other 10 pages I had to put in previews of the middle school football teams (which the publisher wrote for me because he's the one with the passion to get the middle schools in and he's willing to do it) and use AP previews for the Chiefs, Kansas and Kansas State.

This year, we don't have AP. We dropped it last November. And now the head of advertising is saying they'd like me to have it done by August 28. I'd rather it be out Sept. 2 so that it comes out the Wednesday before the season starts (no Thursday paper here). Why the 28th? Apparently to pad the bottom line for the month because they want it to "bill in August." Although that would allow me to include the juco football team for the first time in a a few years because Kansas jucos have been starting the last Saturday of August for the past few years, which was a week too early for the tab. This would be also two weeks before the middle schools start, so they're out.

So I don't know if this year's tab might be better or worse. And I think I might try to persuade them that maybe this is the last year we should do it.

 

Volleyball tab? Can't say I've ever heard of that.

 

That silliness we call our Prep Football Preview generates a decent amount of revenue. I assume if it didn't our management types would have culled it a long time ago. A lot of rural mom and pop stores buy ad space in the preview that wouldn't otherwise.
And with college football cranked up, not having to lock in space for 31 days of prep centerpieces actually helps us out.

 

I kind of like the ingeniously themed covers. I know it goes against modern protocol to say you like having ideas, but there ya go.

 

(1) You cover 31 prep schools? Seriously?

(2) How does college football get in the way of running a "centerpiece" each day? Do you also cover 31 college teams?

 

Yeah. I like the covers where the prep kids are dressed as treasure hunters or CSI members or people from Downton Abbey. Those always scream out, "Football!"