So how's your tab coming?

we have 15 high schools we preview in a 28-pg broadsheet. To make it stand out every year, we follow a theme, seems to be well-received.
and, for the umpteenth time, I've mentioned to an ad guy what an easy sell the football tab should be, then have to listen to his excuses.
Oh well, the best preview, they say, is a done one.

 

I love our ad dept. I've never seen a group at a newspaper with such a lack of understanding for how deadlines work.

So for the last few weeks, it's been discussed that Sept. 21 would be the publish date for our tab(s), with one paper being in question due to a lack of sales.

This morning I wake up to an email (day after Labor Day) saying that small-town news (the one in question) will be publishing its tab, get this, tomorrow.

Gee, thanks for the 8 hours notice on that (since deadline for that paper is 4 p.m. today). Are you kidding me? You'll get what you get. What a joke.

 

When does your season start if you were going to publish Sept. 21?

 

That aims for the start of the league season, and allows time for the schools to get their team photos done (which our ad people seem to think is an important factor in this crap)

 

Yes. They're wrong.

I don't pass judgment on other papers' situations often, but they're wrong. ;D

 

Tab came out with today's paper. Boss was extremely proud of his cover design. Meh.
Only thing that irked me was the rosters. Dating back to our first tab nearly three years ago, the policy has been if a school doesn't get me the rosters or post them online anywhere, we won't have rosters. We've run tabs without rosters in the past when the 5A or 6A schools in town didn't submit anything, pointing out the school and/or particular coach didn't submit a roster. This time, we had everything we needed except for non-football rosters from one smaller school in a nearby town. That one school is where my boss's kids go to school so he took it upon himself to get all rosters from the school, even cheerleaders. Lovely.