Football tab thread 2012

But Fish Fries are >>>>>>>>>> Chick-Fil-A.

When I was in a two-man department a number of years ago, we'd come in, do some preliminary work, and then head out to a fish fry before going to our respective games.

 

I just got the paperwork for ours... and now it's time for the annual debate over which schools we actually cover.

If the ad people could actually sell all the teams (like they did back in the day) then we'd have a reason to write up everyone in the area. But they didn't come anywhere close last year. We still did all the schools, and the section was an overly long, thrown-together, last-minute mess.

Luckily, games don't start 'til after Labor Day.

 

Ours has been done for almost two weeks. We hired a new retail ad director who has cleaned house in the past 6 months and gotten people who can actually sell ads. We went to a magazine format this year, which meant that the section had to be to the printer on Aug. 6. We still managed to get everything in we usually do, except for the pros. BTW, the first kickoff of the prep season is this Thursday. Way, way too early, but it is what it is.

 

We gained basically an extra week to work on our tab because the UIL shifted the calendar to prevent two-a-days from beginning in July. So opening day is five days later than it was last year.

Everything is in motion. The cover has already been shot, the stories assigned, the picture days scheduled. I should get my dummies on Thursday and it goes to press about 10 days later. It gets easier every year.

If I had my druthers, though, I wouldn't do a football tab. Instead I'd do one team per day in the regular paper leading up to the start of the season. Give people a reason to buy the regular paper, instead of waiting for the tab to come out one particular day. Our tab has only broken even the last several years, anyway, and it should be a huge moneymaker.

 

I've only helped freelance a handful of tab stories this year (I start a new gig in two weeks), but I'm glad I'm not dealing with a tab this year. I actually love the actual production of a tab, but I loathed dealing with our advertisers, who would change the page count and ads up to the very last minute possible, and even beyond that most often.

 

Just put the finishing touches on our 64-page broadsheet section. Put in 139 hours in an 8-night span getting it done.

Now, we'll see what brutalities occur since this will be the first FB section bleched by the paper our rocket-scientist bigwigs chose to outsource to.

Truth be told, I won't even want to look at it. That's how little faith I have in the "product" where we are printed that has been produced to this point.

 

Put the finishing touches on our 56-pager Friday night at 8:30 p.m. Unfortunately, our Design Hub does not work past 5 p.m. on weekdays and not at all on weekends to avoid paying overtime. After putting over 80 hours on it last week and only gettting paid for 40, if they think I'm coming in early on Monday to deal with any Design House issues, they can go fuck themselves.

 

Ours printed last week, came out Thursday. Looks good. It was 40 pages for nine high schools, one juco, one local FCS team (and a half-dozen other small colleges that were capsulized), three state DI programs (written largely off media days quotes) and various stats and factoids.
My SE didn't get the pages until a Monday afternoon and, of course, the ME decreed she needed everything on her desk by noon Friday. This was the same week we had a big youth baseball tournament in town, so he probably worked 60-70 hours covering some stuff, doing the daily section, writing a couple leftover college stories and working on the tab itself. Me and our other writer had a combined 90 minutes of overtime over the two-week tab period. Most efficient week of work I've put in in a while.
And we still got the "we CANNOT have overtime" scowl and speech from the ME on payday.
You just can't please some people...

 

Amen brother.

 

Ours is 32 pages on the racks next weekend. The dummy sheets are out and our two main schools each have a one page team ad section. A smaller school down the road has a double-page team ad. That's been the case for years and it's because most of the staff live in that town. I think it's an insult to the local teams that it happens. I wish sometimes we could sell the section ourselves and get the commissions.

 

Be careful. You might get half of your wish. The commissions? Eh,maybe not so much.

 

Third biggest tri-weekly in our state decided a couple of weeks ago it would have a tab.
Such advance planning should be this a spectacular publication.