Ads, ads, ads - it's all about ads

If your ad people can't sell a football tab, spend your next shift making sure your resume is updated.

 

Our fall sports tab is usually pretty well sold...even more so when you consider that this will be my third tab here, each one under a different advertising director and executive editor.

 

At my old paper, they'd sell ads in every community we covered, basically.

There would be a team photo, the schedule underneath, then up to a dozen or so small ads saying, "Bob's Floral Company supports Bumblefuck High." Or "Go Fightin' Gnats, from Sam the Butcher."

We'd sell a shitload of those. We'd also sell a shitload of "Joe Blow! Good luck your senior year! From Mom, Dad, and that girl you knocked up!".

It really isn't hard to make money off a football tab.

 

It is if the fucking ad department is either lazy, incompetent -- or in my paper's case -- both.

 

I feel your pain bro. I asked for 24 pages for our six schools, but only got 18. Was told the reason was the ad department. They say they can't sell enough ads for anything over 18, which after checking our papers archives is the same number of pages the football tab has been for the last nine years. Some of those years there were seven schools in it, one has since closed. I also didn't know it was tough to sell ads in the football tab. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing our ad folks just call the people who advertised in it the year before.

 

As one who puts out a fringe sports broadsheet the week after a similar football section, I say count your blessings you're not doing the fringe sports tab.

The rest of it sucks, of course, but that fringe sports thing just drives me nuts every year.