For the last three months, we have been conducting a bingo promotion that required readers to spend a few minutes extra with our product. This promotion immersed in engagement required our readers to look for a daily number inside our pages. We anticipated this would be popular, especially given the chance to win a significant amount of money, but what we did not anticipate is the volume of calls and visits to the office we received.

Many of those conversations were about the excitement readers had to mark off another number, as they got one more step closer to the monetary prize.

On Tuesday, Mary Alice Thomas of LaFayette came in to claim the final prize – the grand prize – of this promotion. A 45-year subscriber to The Valley Times-News, Thomas was overjoyed and thankful. She said it had become her daily ritual to mark off numbers in The Valley Times-News.

In fact, each winner shared how excited they were to have participated and how they anticipated each day’s newspaper — something we strive for with or without a contest. Congratulations to all of our winners.

We are overwhelmed with pride at the amount of engagement this brought to our community. It was a lot of fun, from the calls to the office and customers walking in with bingo-related questions. Our employees were often stopped to answer bingo question while out in the community too. 

Until this promotion returns, we urge you to continue that connection in the way of content submission, subscription renewals, social media commenting and follows. After all, we are still and always will be proud members of the Chambers County community.