College game-day tabs

It was like having a 12-page sports section on Saturday, without the sense we had to compromise a lot on other things. Major league baseball usually gets hurt badly on Saturdays, but we were able to do the full page we usually have (though we did lock it up a little bit early -- well, a lot early -- for first edition).

From the perspective of getting one out of the way, I feel like the next one should be so much better. For onee thing, both of "our" teams play this Saturday, so the thing will balance out better.

 

We put out our weekly college football tab on Fridays, which seems to work pretty well. Our Saturday papers are loaded with high school football, obviously, but we cover three colleges, so we've got plenty of college stuff to get in, plus Friday gives the reader a day to digest everything rather than breeze through it between their first cup of coffee and the first kickoff at 11:30 a.m.

 

We have a 6-8 page section going into Saturdays and an 8-10 page section on Sundays. This in addition to our normal 6-10 page sections on both days. Good times ... but it's worth it.

 

With us being a tab sports section anyway, we do something a little different.

Our Penn State and Big Ten stuff goes on the back end of the sports section -- upside down. So if you want to go to Penn State, you turn the paper over. Been doing it for four seasons now, I think.

First one of year went pretty good -- except for Big Ten standings strip. We have two facing pages on the rest of the Big Ten, and put the standings in as two pieces so it goes across the entire double truck. For final edition, I accidentally put the first half in on both pages. Dammit.

 

DyePack has no idea why he just ejaculated.

 

I think, on some deep level, I wrote that with him in mind.

 

Well, we're six weeks into this project, about halfway through the projected 13-issue run.

Advertising has basically hit the target – or slightly better – each week.

Reader response has been pretty good.

But in six weeks I've had six different advertising configurations, which makes advance planning kinda tricky. A noon Friday deadline means I can't wait on AP to deliver their formal advances for stuff, and some MCT copy that seems to always move after dark on Fridays (too late, really, to be of any use regardless) obviously doesn't help me with this project.

But our writers have embraced the form and we've gotten much better coverage of some things that usually have been tricky for us – state small colleges and the rather successful D-I school that's too far downstate for us to assign as a beat.

After a couple of weeks, I realized it was a production structure more like the weeklies where I worked at back in the day – the most important days are before the dummies get into my hands, when I have time to put together a small-college feature or some stat-related thing at my (relative) leisure, sketch out a cover and look for the right art, etc., etc.

I push hard on Wednesday evening, which is pretty quiet this time of year, tackle problem areas on Thursday and the final quality control touches on Friday morning.

So far, so good.

 

Good for you, Hejira.

It helps, for me at least, to have 5-6 formatted open pages each week. That way, I can work on those early in the week and know going in I need those pages plus whatever ad-laden extra pages they give me. I tend to save the features that AP moves through the week, as well as national individual and team stats as well. Plus, we do rosters/depth charts on a page and the conference capsules (courtesy www.uofpodunk'sconference.com) on another page.

You think Friday noon is tricky. I get my dummies Wednesday at 6 p.m., and they print first thing Friday -- which means I basically have to have it all done Thursday night. I am ready for the season to be over with.

rb

 

That reminds me of a weekly where I worked in the early 90s where I'd get dummies at 5 p.m. Monday and had to punch out a section that could be upwards of 18 broadsheet pages by 4 p.m. on Tuesday. We were shittin' it and gettin' it, but in the process I got an advanced degree in planning and constructive page-filling.

In the current situation, I've been able to work out a basic format for the whole book, which helps a lot with planning. But every week there's some new twist to the ad lines.

At this point, though, I have built enough elements to deal with just about anything.

The section is sold outt for the last seven weeks and right now I'm pushing the ad guys to re-open the sales for the final copy to see if we can push another four pages into the thing.

The best news, from my perspective, is that it's going well enough that I think we can be assured of doing this again in the fall of 2008. Now, I'd like to figure a way to extend that basic concept into basketball season, or some other kind of semi-regular tab presentation – largely for the revenue potential.

 

HH,

Worked at a shop that had a four-page wrap for an SEC, ACC, SoCon, SIAC and a JuCo football squad. Went really well. Allowed to free up space inside for high school football. All well and good. Advertising did well, too. Then we tried to stretch that into basketball. Let's just say, not so good. In fact, horrible. Just fine tune the football stuff for now. Unless the call for hoops coverage is as high or nearly so as football, then don't even stress over it.

 

Well, I have plenty of other things to stress about.

 

Just to complete the circle on our experience, in case others want to consider going down this road:

We did 14 game day tabs, ranging in size from 12 to 16 pages ... the initial plan was for 13 of those bad boys but then one of our teams went and got themselves into a bowl game.

Without divulging too many state secrets (hi, Rusty!) we generated between $35K and $45K in ad revenue ... and something on the order of 75% of that was "new dollars" that did not cannibalize from existing sports page or newspaper advertisers.

Anybody out there could use an extra $40K on the revenue side? I thought so.

And, honestly, I thought (of course) that we could have done better on the sales side. That will be a big focus for 2008.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the internal content was maybe 80% local, with some SEC/Top 25 stuff from the AP and MCT sprinkled in for good measure. A lot of local photos from our fall game shoots, a certain amount of AP stuff and two covers that we shot special for the tab.

Most of the production was done at my desk, which will be another issue for me to tackle in 2008. We have a "slow night" on Wednesday when I need to incorporate more help from one of my deskers. Also, we're gonna shuffle schedules a little in 2008 and I'll have a little more desk depth on Thursdays to help get me over the top.

We need to leave here on Thursday nights with a full set of proofs to sleep on. Most of the time this year, I was still slamming to make the noon Friday deadline – and for the bowl, I must confess, I largely did it as an all-nighter. Took me back to my college days, and not really in a good way, but it got done.

Overall? I'd give us an A- for effort, a B+ for execution and a C+ for my management of the thing. Which is typical of my tenure here, I suppose.