• by John Gaffney , September 5, 2002

Gannett’s new Sports Weekly hit the newsstands yesterday with 900,000 copies and a bet that deep coverage of pro football and baseball will be the ticket to success.

The color tab is actually a new version of Baseball Weekly, which announced in July that it would add football coverage as a reaction to sinking fan interest in baseball and a demand for more in-depth coverage of football. Baseball Weekly had an average weekly circulation of 250,000. Managing editor Tim McQuay said he expects Sports Weekly to settle at a base of 350,000 and grow from there.

"This week I saw that the Atlanta Braves game that had their lowest attendance of the year," McQuay said. "And that’s a good team in a good market. If baseball were still booming we would still do Baseball Weekly."

The first issue leads off with an NFL Preview. The NFL will most likely dominate the publication’s covers, but McQuay said a balance between the sports will be struck inside the issues. He said Baseball Weekly’s strength was in the depth of its coverage. Individual team reports, player profiles and enough stats to satisfy the most obsessive fan. Half of the readers of Baseball Weekly were participants in "fantasy leagues," which are networks of fans who pick a virtual team and track that team through actual player performances. Fantasy football fans will likely be a key audience for Sports Weekly, as will business travellers.

From an advertising perspective, McQuay said the first issue is "healthy" but will be thin on next week’s publication date, September 11. He expects that traditional football advertisers, which include autos, beverages and hardware, will be attracted to the new format.

McQuay said the publication will stick to pro baseball and football for the foreseeable future. He did not rule out considering other sports if the marketplace and readership demanded it.