So how's your tab coming?

Our page count was reduced from 40 to 32 tab pages this year. They said they wanted to make it 36, but the press configuration meant they could only reduce in increments of 8 pages (it made sense when they diagrammed it.) Ad sales were about the same as a year ago, so that means an extremely tight tab — and less work for me. I'm breezing right now.

 

Knee-deep doesn't begin to describe it. Looks like (no more than) a 48-page tab.

 

I'm going to have to have Pablo Picasso sign an autograph to pay it.

 

Copy deadline's today. I've got most of my stuff. We get dummies tomorrow. For the first time since I've been here, someone else is laying it out. So all in all, we could be in waay worse shape.
We print early 8/26. It should be an adventure in another week.

 

We have a 40-pager, wasn't at this shop last year but told we're waaaaayyy ahead of where they were at this time a year ago.
Ad space looks good, made the budget for it last night and the stories are progressing nicely. Other than the ADs being unable to email or fax rosters and questionnaires after multiple phone calls, not too much to complain about, but then again it's only Tuesday morning, see me the night before the beast is due.

 

No tab ... in fact, no HS football at all.

God, I love this job sometimes.

 

We finished our 29-team, 120-page preview yesterday at about 5:30 p.m. Went straight from the newsroom to my daughter's soccer game, grabbed some dinner, walked the dog and was asleep by 9 p.m. Slept until 11 a.m. today.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday were absolute bears. Five of us killed enough diet pop (two kinds of Mountain Dew, Vernor's and, yes, Tab) to float the Titanic.

Started at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday and worked until 5:15 a.m. on Monday morning. Slept from 5:45 until 6:30, then did a 70-mile round trip to get a team photo and some mugs. Slept for an hour, then back to the office for more caffeine and the final push.

Now it's time to get started on our college and pro tab.

BTW, I thought our ad count was very good, considering the area's economic issues. Props to our ad people.

 

Calvin: I look forward to seeing your new concept. For me, Diet Coke is the drink of... necessity.

 

Our tab size stayed the same, though copy-wise we picked up about an extra 50 inches or so, due to a couple less ads (a couple of mainstay ad buyers closed shop this year --- one because the old lady retired and didn't want wnayone taking over).
3 sections, printing Friday, Sat Sunday I think. They run next week Thurs, Fri, Sat.
I have all my info, quotes and ideas. I have written five stories for it, have 7 more to go. Copy dedline is about 36 hours away.

 

I must have been drinking, but I pushed for a 12-page tab with capsules on 60 prep teams and six feature stories and one cover story to be blown out into a 30-page preview with articles on every team and all that good stuff. Don't know if they can sell it, but I'm not going to let the ineptness of the ad staff dictate how much heart and soul I pour into my product.

Of course, I get all this pushed through and I'm raring to go since Aug. 1... but practices don't start for another week and most of the coaches I talk to are like, "Well, gee, I don't know who my QB is yet, we haven't been on the field yet."

Add to that the pub date is going to be the second Sunday in September, I have like four days of practice to pull it all together.

So basically, while I told them I could do a "Bobby McGee and Joe Schmoe will compete for the QB1 spot," I have a feeling I'm going to be making a lot of phone calls in a four-day period.

I still wouldn't trade it for anything else.

 

We usually have 12 pages (there's only four high schools in our coverage area). This year other projects that have normally been tabs have been turned into two- or four-page sections within the daily itself. Not enough ad sales.

Hopefully, the football tab will be different. First, we have two new ad reps. One's been in the business before and the other already seems to be better than some of the people we've had here since January. The question, I suppose, is will they have enough time to sell it since both of them are new and don't have regular contacts yet.

If they can't sell it, I'm not sure if I would put in one team's preview each day the week before the openers or try to do two or three extra pages in the daily. At least one would have to go in a day early because they open on a Thursday.

 

Ours came in at 120+ pages (I have no idea what the actual count is, not my department). All the copy was done two weeks ago. Last weekend was spent proofing. The inside half was printed today with the rest to roll tomorrow. It hits the stands this Sunday, the last one before the season kicks off.