ideas for a (small) high school basketball tab

Hello, I've been informed that our yearly basketball tab will likely only be 12 pages (at most) this year. I've got five schools to cover (so five boys teams, five girls teams) ... With the goal of having 50-60 percent advertising in the tab, there obviously won't be much room for content. Not that I'm complaining about that ;D but what would you do with such minimal space and yet have it be actually something worth thumbing through?

My thought now is to keep it basic with rosters, schedules, players to watch, games to watch and capsules on each team. Anything else you'd try to include? leave out? Thanks

FB

 

Consider yourself lucky to still have a tab ... especially with only five schools.

Try to get the center spread ad-free so you can double-truck a feature story.

 

You think 12 pages is not enough to cover 5 schools! Holy crap.

 

Become FuturaBoldCondenced. That oughta get you a few more column inches of space.

 

I was stunned when they gave me the pages for our basketball tab this year. 20 pages with 7 full page ads. That left 13 pages (only one open page) for 11 stories. We had to cut two stories, rosters and skeds and throw 'em in the daily section.

I couldn't believe they sold so many ads. Last year, we had 24 pages and just a few full page ads. We were able to fit all 11 stories, skeds and several national preview stories.

To help with your problem....with 10 teams (5 boys and 5 girls), you might want to write one story per school and include the boys and girls team in it. That'll cut you down to five stories.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

Whatever you do, so not cut out the rosters and the heights of the players. If a reader has your tab they should never have to buy a program at the game.

When I covered high schools I would have a tattered, old tab by the last week of the season that I would cart from game to game.

I know ADs change rosters, but the tab should be a backbone of the high school coverage.

 

Not if you want it to be good, and definitely not if there are ads over half of it -- plus you lose the cover to a photo or artwork. That's 11 pages to jam in the ads and info and pics on 10 teams.

 

12 tab pages (some w/ ads) for 10 teams? You're better off scattering the stories out over a full week in the regular section.

The basketball tabs we used to put out at my hometown paper were usually 24-28 pages for 20 schools. You can't do shit with that little amount of space. Basic capsule/roster/sked information and maybe one photo (depending on ad space) for each team. One CP feature story on the doubletruck. That's it.

 

If some are in the same league (esp. small schools), try combining them.

In my shop, we have 17 high schools in our circ. Our four biggest schools each get their own previews, but our other 13 are combined into three leagues. Instead of having four separate previews for our 2A league's boys team, we have one long league preview that is as tight as possible.

Plus, with 34 teams, some are bound to not submit anything, so there's one less thing to worry about

 

I get 12 pages to cover four boys' teams, four girls' teams and two wrestling teams. Cover will be a nice pic my photog has already taken. Page 2 will be league schedules. Back cover might be a full-page ad. That leaves me with nine pages for 10 stories.

My two in-county schools get one page per sport (2 boys, 2 girls, one wrestling = 5) and a spill page. The two-out of county schools one page each (total of 2). No pix for them, sorry. Thumbnails, maybe, but nothing fancy.

Page 10 is the spill for the big stories. Page 11 is the spill for the league schedules and the small stories (if needed).

Even with the way that works out, I'd have no chance of putting in some of the stuff you're thinking about. Team schedules, yes. Players to watch...you might save that for the regular edition the night before play begins.

My predecessor used to use the cover to start the feature story. That bought him an extra page, I guess, but it looked odd to me.

 

i've never seen a tab that has used a video game cover.

 

here's a thought as to our tab, run all of the ads half page, go large on the art and box the schedules and rosters....put the table of contents, if you have one, as a part of the cover art, that way you won't have to mess with it inside...and if you can't get half page ad lines, then go medium with the stories and use lots of mug shots to fill space as well as a team picture for each squad....hope one of those will help