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Winner of SciFi.com B5LR contest announced

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B5LR

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<font size="+1">Winner of SciFi.com B5LR contest announced</font>
<font size="3">A telemovie captain will be named after Washington fan </font>

Sci-Fi Wire has announced the winner of the recent contest at SciFi.com, which gave a chance to a US fan to have a captain named after them in the upcoming telemovie.

When the competition was launched the site said, "Enter for your shot at sci-fi immortality. We'll choose one lucky winner who will have a character in the upcoming movie Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers named after her or him. We can't give you many details, but we will say the character will come complete with the rank of captain and has a very slim chance of making it through the movie alive!"

The site today reported today that the winner is Bart Gregg of Moses Lake, Washington. So, get ready to see Captain Gregg when the telemovie comes to our screens. Congratulations to Bart for beating over 15,000 other fans to this unique claim to fame.
 
Yes, I know thanks. But this is a news article. i.e. from the front page. People can then go from the front page, into this thread and discuss it. It's all automatic.

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station.jpg
<font size="-2" color="silver">"The Babylon Project was our last, best, hope for peace.
A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral
territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter
of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space,
all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the third age of
mankind, the year the great war came upon us all. This is
the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is
2259: the name of the place is Babylon 5."
 
Hum...Does anyone else think that it is a bad thing that the winner's city and state was printed too? That could be a bad thing. *nod*

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Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out.
 
Yes that would be bad! wouldn't want 15,000 angry B5 fans coming to your town to visit would you?

------------------
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I'd look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange it for me, Mr. Morden?"
Vir - In The Shadow of Z' HA Dum
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AntonyF:
Yes, I know thanks. But this is a news article. i.e. from the front page. People can then go from the front page, into this thread and discuss it. It's all automatic.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


re: duplicate thread

You are welcome.


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"Hello. I want to welcome back our viewers. We've been gone a long time."
 
Yeah why not let us have a shot at getting a character named after us? We are not all Lord Peter Pensleby-Smythes over here in Britain you know!!!!!!!!

Will there be a second shot for international fans because we've been robbed!

;-0

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"We Live for the One. We die for the One!"
 
Sci-Fi is an American network (Sci-Fi U.K. is a related, but separate company.) They're paying for the film and they wanted to limit the contest they were running to their viewers. What part of this is hard to understand? (They are also using the date collected from entries for marketing purposes, which again are limited to the U.S.) I'm less sure why Alaska and Hawaii were excluded, although sweepstakes of all kinds are commonly limited to the continetal U.S. Maybe they have restrictive regulations governing contests, as some other states do.

If the producers ever run such a contest, and they did on B5, they will probably open it up to others. (Although at least one of the previous versions of this was a charity raffle event where you had to buy a ticket and be present - at a convention - to win. So that was even more restrictive.)

In any event Sci-Fi was not trying to ensure a "white" name, as ridiculously asserted in an earlier post. I assure you if the film was being produced for a French network and they were running a promotion it would be limited to people who were actually in a position to watch that network, not everyone in the world in the name of "fairness."

"It's nothing personal. It's just business." - The Godfather

smile.gif


Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
 
i hate scifi they wanted "white" names so they left out the rest of us

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What are you talking about, Londo? A "white" name?

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"Hello. I want to welcome back our viewers. We've been gone a long time."
 
Nothing like a little paranoia to make one's day complete.

The winner was selected by a random drawing and the contestants limited to legal residents (not citizens) of the continental United States. Last time I checked there were plenty of "non-white" people around here and people with "non-white" names (the two groups being different, since lots of people of other races have names that are stereotypically "white.")

BTW, how does excluding people from, say, Russia or the U.K., increase the odds of a "white" name winning the contest? Most of the contestants from both places would have names that are stereotypically "white" If Sci-Fi wished to avoid such names they would have done far better to exclude Los Angeles, New York City, Austin and Miami.
smile.gif


Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Actually I wasn't having a pop, I was merely asking for us to be give n a crack of the whip too. I am more than happy that someone in the US has had their moment to shine, I was just hoping that a similar scheme could be extended to us at a later (sooner rather than later) date.

I think the racial stereotype argument over the naming of the character is just plain daft. Sci-Fi in general is a powerful weapon agaisnt racism. Babylon 5 and it's related stories are a prime example of this, showing the benefits of different races working togethet against common enemies and to achieve common goals. I would have thought anyone could grasp that metaphor, so I think the racism slur should just be dropped. Babylon 5 did not only include characters of multiethnicity, but it also explore their cultures I think enough has been said!

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"We Live for the One. We die for the One!"
 
Also there's the legal concerns over competitions... different rules for different companies. I've heard all the excuses in that quarter from Fandom.com.

That aside, and Joseph's explanation aside, it *still* sucks. B5 is an international thing, and it will be sold to other countries. Sci-Fi Channel should be more forward thinking. In an ideal world, of course.

------------------
station.jpg
<font size="-2" color="silver">"The Babylon Project was our last, best, hope for peace.
A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral
territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter
of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space,
all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the third age of
mankind, the year the great war came upon us all. This is
the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is
2259: the name of the place is Babylon 5."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>B5 is an international thing, and it will be sold to other countries.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

True, but unless The Sci-Fi Channel negotiated for partial ownership of the movie and/or TV series, the network won't gain anything from those international sales, so the "promote the thing to your own viewers" argument still holds. Warner Bros. will no doubt sell the finished movie, and the TV series if that follows, all over the world. But Warner Bros. wasn't running this promotion, Sci-Fi was. And Sci-Fi won't make a dime off those "somewhere down the road" international sales, so why should they make the odds of winning worse for their own viewers?

The whole point of any broadcasting promotion is to entice people to watch or listen to your station. That's why radio stations always run promotions that require you to listen throughout the day to collect clues before you can "call in and win." Is it "unfair" if an FM rock station doesn't also promote the contest on an affliated AM talk station? Of course not. People who primarily listen to AM talk radio are not the rock station's target audience, so sifting through entries from those people would be a waste of time and effort. Even worse if a talk-radio listener won it would be unfair to the people who actually do listen to the rock station and thereby pay the bills.

If you think this sucks for you guys, try to imagine yourself as a U.S. resident reading that the winner was somebody living in another country who may or may not even get a chance to see the movie, ever.

Like I said, at some point the producers probably will run similar contests of their own.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
 
The British would see it, we would fight like Minbari and Humans, blood sweat and bile until it happened, it's called the British spirit!

If the BBC did a competition similar to this over a new Dr. Who or Blake's 7 revival say for example, and an American, Tibetan, Outer Mongolian, or Martian won, I honestly couldn't care, it's the luck of the draw, and that should be the beauty of it.

Anyway, like I said I don't have a problem with the current result, I would just like to get a crack of the whip in the future.

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"We Live for the One. We die for the One!"
 
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