Prep Football Sections

yeah, fairly small market in florida.... something like 10 pages of h.s. (but there are three different versions), then sections for college and pros.

 

I could walk down any main street in any town (especially the smaller towns) and sell enough ads to make it work.
[/quote]

Don't suggest that, or you will be doing it....

 

I'm in Texas and we did a 36-pager (tabloid style) for one school, football only.

 

I'm expecting an 8-page cut in our tab from what it was last fall. That's going to suck because we'll have to cut some schools out for the first time and the towns that buy all the ads will have even more pages in comparison with the others. I'm forwarding every frigging phone call to our ad manager.

 

Last year, ours covered 86 teams and was more than 100 tab pages.

 

Our football preview section last year was a 64-page tab, about half devoted to preps. Won't be surprised if it's down a few pages this year.

 

That's been the case at the last couple of places I've been as well. Just hard to justify doing one if they can't make money on it (which is beyond me, because, as one person said, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to sell).

I can't imagine an 80-90 page tab. How many schools are you talking about and what are you doing on them? Sounds like a freakin nightmare to produce.

 

I know these sections are pretty much obsolete the day they are printed (if not before), but has there been much thought about selling these sections as a stand-alone product for a couple of weeks after they are inserted into the paper? It seems as if people might be interested in buying them for, say, $1 (or whatever).

 

Damn good idea.

I always kept mine throughout the season, because it had so much valuable info (key players, schedules, stats, etc.).

 

Personally I'd rather do away with the football tab and preview one team per day through August in the main paper, right up until the season kicks off. Give folks a reason to buy the paper all month instead of one day.

Might as well, if we're not going to make any money off a tab.

 

We've done a tab for years, although it has decreased in size lately. WE used to do 32 pages, and we did 16 last year.

Our new ad director tells me that for his department, it's time-consuming with no payoff because they can't sell ads for it. I, too, wonder how that could possibly be the case.

 

That's true, too. I've seen places go that route. I guess a lot depends on how many teams you are trying to cover.