Football sections: Tab vs broadsheet

How many of you still do your football preview sections as tabs? If you're still a tab, why? If you've switched to broadsheet, when did you do it and why?

Any information you can provide, including the name of your newspaper, would be appreciated as we look at reshaping what we do here.

Answer here or e-mail me if you get a chance.

Thanks,

Rusty Hampton
The Clarion-Ledger
rhampton@clarionledger.com

 

All of our specialty publications (of which we have about ton a year), including football tabs, have always been tabs. I've always preferred tabs and berliner formats to broadsheets, but that may be just me.

 

The Crying-Liar gets no help from me.
I keed, I keed.
The reason for broadsheets, I suppose 6cx15" and full page ads generate more money and the ad people seem to be able to sell them easier.
At another shop we did a quarterfold, stitched and trimmed for preps only.
I don't think it made any money, but it was easier to put together, since all you wrote was team capsules and ran skeds for each school in the coverage area. Each school got a page and each ad was a full-page.

 

Advertising switched us to broadsheet a while back but we talked them back into doing a tab. We got a ton of complaints, readers saying they preferred the tab because it was handy to keep by their chair or whatever for an entire season while the broadsheet just cluttered stuff up.

 

Yeah, how could anyone find room for that.

 

My strong preference continues to be the tab.

It's user-friendly.

 

The problem with tabs is they rarely win special section awards.

I've been beating the drum for years to get our tab changed to broadsheet. Ad people won't have any of it.

 

Not that awards mean much, but we've done nothing but tabs and almost always win something. A great section is a great section, no matter the format. And, depending on the topic, advertising has never had a problem.