The St. Petersburg Times is taking its young-adult-aimed free weekly tabloid, tbt* (aka "Tampa Bay Times") to Monday-Friday publication starting March 6. The Times says it "will include concise versions of the day's local and national news, with an emphasis on sports, consumer features and entertainment." The tab, which began publishing in September 2004, will be 40 pages and circulate 40,000 copies Monday through Thursday. The Friday edition will be bigger, with a pull-out entertainment section, and will be available all weekend.

This move has prompted the Tampa Tribune to file a federal lawsuit, claiming that the paper's name infringes on their trademark of The Tampa Times, an afternoon paper that merged with the Trib in 1982.

"After years of trying and failing to sell newspapers successfully in Tampa, St. Pete has chosen deception as a strategy for convincing Hillsborough residents to read a Pinellas County newspaper," the lawsuit says. "Instead of adopting a mark that identifies its own product, St. Pete seeks to associate its product with plaintiffs' well-known and historically rich mark, The Tampa Times."

Zing! This isn't the first time this issue's landed in a courtroom. In the early '90s, the St. Pete Times launched a new Tampa edition which had a different front page from the other editions. They dropped "St. Petersburg" from the Tampa edition's nameplate so it was just "The Times." If I recall correctly, The Times of London got their knickers in a twist about that and went to court. Don't know whatever came out of that, but I don't think the Times' expanded Tampa edition was a huge success and didn't last more than a few years.

Update: Times AME/Presentation Patty Cox e-mails (and Zach points out in the comments) that the Times still publishes a Tampa edition. Didn't mean to imply otherwise, just that the initiative was eventually scaled down, but I'll concede I may be misremembering that (I'm getting so, so old). The Times A1 is still zoned for Tampa, the extent depending on the news, and the flag is stacked, with "St. Petersburg" smaller and "Times" played up. And the Tampa local section is significantly different. Also, the Times settled the Times of London suit in 1996 by agreeing to pay the Times of London a $12,000 license fee for the right to use The Times for 99 years.

But back to the Tampa Bay Times, see also this blog post by Times media critic Eric Deggans.

Industry convention says such tabloids are a combination starter kit/laboratory for newspapers -- getting younger readers to consider a regular newspaper habit, while acting as an incubator for fresh approaches which can be imported to the mothership publication. Much as I love my friends who work at tbt*, I worry that such publications really encourage young readers to see newspapers as irrelevant to their lives outside of entertainment. That's not a perception which will help traditional newspapers improve their brand much.

>Times tabloid to publish daily starting March 6 [St. Petersburg Times]
>Name Of New Publication Sparks Suit Against Times [Tampa Tribune]