Is your ad department this bad

We just put together our largest football tab ever (24 pages, nice product for a three time a week paper that has only had a sports section for 6 years and consists of the sports editor and two stringers). Anyway, I, the sports editor, sold 85 percent of the ads for the tab, with our ad department selling the rest. Also, we used to do a weekly football section during the season, but that has been dropped since the ad department claimed they couldn't sell it.
I'm wondering if there are any other ad departments this bad out there and how you guys would handle this. I've already vented to the editor and publisher.

 

You shouldn't have vented. You should have asked when commision checks are cut.

 

We have this discussion at our paper about every 15 minutes. Somehow our ad department can't sell ads in an affluent college town for a major team. They are good at playing hacky sack, though, if that helps.

 

I remember working at a paper and a colleague said "We don't sell advertising, we accept it."

My first thought is that if you sell 85 percent of the advertising, you should come up with a different arrangement with your management - you should sell the whole tab, keep all of the money, and pay the paper to print and distribute it.

If the publisher isn't reaming out his ad staff, something is wrong.

My other thought is that this is wrong on a lot of levels. It leaves you open to a lot of conflict charges - "Oh, you sold Jonesville more advertising so Smithtown doesn't get as much coverage". Also, although you did a good job, you're job isn't an advertising sales person. Aside from the journalism conflicts, it's lousy management and bad business practice. If this is the only thing you sell during the year, you can't follow up with other ad sales. If an ad sales person sold an ad, they might be able to follow up with more ad sales during the year.

 

Seriously, you getting any coin for selling the ads?

 

This happened about 7-8 years ago:
We were going to be doing a weekly tab for the minor league (AA) baseball team in town. The sports department is friendly with many area businessmen and we handed the ad department a list of 20-30 businesses that told us they wanted to advertise or promised they would take out an ad. The ad department comes back a week later and says "Nobody wanted to buy an ad"

It's been at least 5-6 years since we've done any type of high school preview tab (be it for football, basketball or any other sport) because the ad department can't sell enough ads to make it worthwhile.

 

Sounds to me like that ad department sat on its ass. Granted, I don't know that department, but if people are passionate about a team then selling ads should be easier.

 

Sounds like many ad departments these days when it comes to football tabs. They claim they can't sell them until the deadline passes and they drop the prices, then they magically sell a bunch.

 

First of all, I would demand a commission. Second of all, what a bunch of lazy assholes if you can't sell advertising in a football tab! Some guy was bitching about a similar case on the football tab thread and I thought it was a rare deal. These comments make it sound like an epidimic. The publisher needs to have a come-to-Jesus talk with the ad director, who needs to then put a Bic lighter under some people's asses.

 

True story: One recent year about a month out from printing the football section, and two months after assignments had been doled out to writers and photographers, I called the ad production person to confirm specs and when dummies would be available.

She asked, "For which section?"
I said, "For the football preview section."
Long silence. I finally asked, "Are you still there?"
She says, "Uh, I really don't know what to say."
"How about answering my questions."
She said, "Uh, I really don't know what to say because I know nothing about it."
"Know nothing about what?"
"The section."
"Are you kidding me?"
"I need to go talk to Louis (VP of adv.) to find out what's up. We don't have that section scheduled"

 

Can't sell a high school football section in South Carolina? Two words...lazy fucktards.

 

This tale is definitely going into Nuts and Dolts. I was once handed the pages for a tab ON THE DAY IT HAD TO BE DONE AND SENT.

Needless to say, there was some discussion about that.