Metro decides on radical idea to boost sagging Saturday circulation after research indicates people have more time to read

Well, first, we aren't exactly sneaking. We've spent about $1 million - unprecedented for this organization - to promote the new weekend product we launched on Nov. 2. We're a tab one day a week and proud of it.

The idea began about 19 months ago when a committee representing all departments at the paper - but containing no top-level executives - began to ask how we could better leverage circulation off of Sunday. The circulation figures told the story: 540,000 on Sunday; 325,000 Monday-Friday, and 300,000 on Saturday.

Research in our metropolitan area unearthed a crucial fact. Sunday-only readers - especially women, view Saturday as their second-best day to read a newspaper. None of the five weekdays even come close.

Our committee, headed by Assistant Features Director Ellen Gardner, quickly decided on the tab format, because the new paper had to sell alongside the early Sunday edition, which hits supermarkets and convenience stores around 10 a.m. on Saturdays.

As originally designed, the tabloid had an 88-page main section of news, sports, business and features. It had a 40-page lifestyle section and a broadsheet classified section.

We sweetened the paper by increasing the Saturday news hole, adding more breaking news and sports and beefing up our once-anemic religion coverage to four tab pages.

In the Nov. 2 launch edition, we invited comment from readers, and, we got it - between the eyes. More than 2,500 people called that first weekend, the great majority with negative comments. The biggest complaint by far: families couldn't share the paper because there weren't enough sections. Others bemoaned the lack of mutual-funds listings in the business tables (we'd grabbed that space for other uses, but they're back now). And others berated us because they didn't get late sports results. In our zeal to get out over 100,000 extra papers, we had let the presses run with the early edition.

Most major Post-Dispatch executives spent Saturday taking the calls. Among them, Cole Campbell, who took over as the new editor after the tab launch had been ordered, and General Manager Terry Egger who had made the final decision to launch. All were impressed by the intensity of the calls and touched by how deeply readers seemed to care about our newspaper.

We came in Monday, Nov. 4, ready for action. Within one day, we solved the sectioning problem, creating a 36-page sports/business section that pulls out from the center of the main sheet. We also reinstated the mutual funds and addressed the late sports problem. When the second tabloid edition came out Nov. 9, the calls were down to 350, some of them favorable. Calls were down to 35 by the third weekend.

Other numbers are looking good, too. Ad sales are up and circulation seems to be climbing as well, although we won't be sure until March.

With our success, some people ask me if we'll be going tabloid the other six days a week. No, Saturday's edition is different because the nature of the day is different, but we do hope the reader friendliness will spread.

When we were gearing up for launch last summer, we thought we had developed a unique weekend strategy. Then someone brought in a copy of the Saturday Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call. We were humbled when we learned that the Morning Call had been doing this for nearly 20 years.

Weil is managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.