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MDA Pulling Plug on Annual Telethon

Good riddance.
The show in recent decades boiled down to two ingredients...
Kissing Jerry's ass
Infomercials for corporate sponsors (including giving suits TV face time with Jerry).
 
It's not about crippled kids. It's about tasteless, ego-driven fund-raising in which kids with disabilities are turned into victims and objects of pathos.
 
You would be hard pressed to find another private fundraiser whereby none of those "victims and objects of pathos" ever had to pay a dime for anything that was necessary for their well-being...at least not when Jerry Lewis was running the show. Not just kids with disabilities, but "Jerry's Kids" with Muscular Dystrophy. And you got entertainment for that full 24 hours. You would be even harder pressed to find a single government "program" that could ever say the same.
 
Silkie said:
You would be hard pressed to find another private fundraiser whereby none of those "victims and objects of pathos" ever had to pay a dime for anything that was necessary for their well-being...at least not when Jerry Lewis was running the show.
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Danny Thomas' St Jude's Hospital does it right.
At lease I don't see the sick children in the commercials as being exploited.
They all seem to radiate strength and hope.
 
This telethon would've just been getting started in about the next hour back in the day, right? Or did it run from late Sunday after the 11 o'clock news until Monday evening before signing off?

Regardless, I remember as a kid the TV sets at my parents and grandparents' houses would be locked on the telethon for the duration, watching all the acts, seeing both the national and our local station's tote boards rising each hour, and watching Jerry's big signature number at the end, before signing off and kicking it back to the local stations one last time. I used to enjoy it back when the entire telethon was seemingly filled with constant string of "who's who" in showbiz and aside from a few acts and numbers here and there, you knew most all the performers. Then it got to the point where it was a bunch of unknowns and third rate acts, with a few solid and well-known ones here and there. Lewis' last telethon as host happened back in 2010, after which the MDA seemingly kicked him to the curb and eventually shut down the whole concept of a telethon or even a TV special to raise money.

It now seems to be an online affair hosted by Kevin Hart, but clear details on the site are a bit lacking: Telethon | Muscular Dystrophy Association
 
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Labor Day isn't the same without him. I donated $2 to MDA in his last telethon, back in 2010. How time flies. He always had Charo on, and Tony Orlando was always in NYC. Stupid Q13 in Seattle always ran 8 hours of a tape-delayed and chopped up show. KAPP wasn't much better in Yakima - starting at 7AM on Labor Day. The only channel that ran the whole 21 hours seemed to be Superstation WGN, at least those that I could receive in either Seattle or Yakima.
 
In the Kansas City area, the telethon aired on CBS affiliate KCTV-TV, Ch. 5 &, in later years - after 2004, the US Open & other CBS daytime programming would air on WB, & later MyNetworkTV, affiliate KSMO-TV, Ch. 62.
 
Wasn't there another organization that also did a telethon back in the mid-80s at a different time of the year? Maybe Easter Seals or March of Dimes? Somehow I recall our local CBS affiliate carrying the Jerry Lewis telethon, but our NBC station carrying another one either earlier or later in the year.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Wasn't there another organization that also did a telethon back in the mid-80s at a different time of the year? Maybe Easter Seals or March of Dimes? Somehow I recall our local CBS affiliate carrying the Jerry Lewis telethon, but our NBC station carrying another one either earlier or later in the year.
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I remember Easter Seals and the Childrens Miracle Network, which benefits Childrens Hospitals.

As far as Jerry, yes I can see where the children were often depicted as objects of pity. The "corporate guys in suits" segments were to bore you into thinking "this is a good time to call". Don't think the telethon wasn't a science.

Working on the local segments were fun though!
 
WSMV in Nashville used to air an Easter Seals telethon...I know the organization is national, but all the telethons were local. Just like Children's Miracle Network, there were pre-taped segments but the bulk of the telethon just had one camera on a phone bank with two news anchors taking turns interviewing local kids that the charity supported on another camera.
 
RadioFreeCedarCity said:
WSMV in Nashville used to air an Easter Seals telethon...I know the organization is national, but all the telethons were local. Just like Children's Miracle Network, there were pre-taped segments but the bulk of the telethon just had one camera on a phone bank with two news anchors taking turns interviewing local kids that the charity supported on another camera.
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That must have been the one a friend of mine worked on. He was trying to find someone to sing at 6am Sunday morning. There were no takers other than this green singer who wasn't very good.

Except he'd be a superstar a few years later---Garth Brooks (from my friend's recollection)
 
gr8oldies said:
The "corporate guys in suits" segments were to bore you into thinking "this is a good time to call". Don't think the telethon wasn't a science.
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I'm sure everything about the telethon, from the timing and length of recorded segments and local breaks to which acts were booked to perform at certain times of the evening or day, etc. were all well thought out and planned.

Somewhat unrelated, but I once read an article that the QVC and HSN hosts have a monitor in front of them that shows the number of orders being placed at any given moment so they know when to push the right buttons or say the right thing to cause more interest or generate more sales. It's also been proven that when they use certain buzzwords or phrases, or when David Venable on QVC does his little happy dance, for instance, incoming calls and orders spike.

Similarly, I'm sure the folks running this telethon (and others similar) 40 years ago also had the ability to see the number of calls coming in and the level of $$ being pledged and also knew which types of programming or commentary was most effective.
 
Mikey Radio said:
I'm sure everything about the telethon, from the timing and length of recorded segments and local breaks to which acts were booked to perform at certain times of the evening or day, etc. were all well thought out and planned.

Somewhat unrelated, but I once read an article that the QVC and HSN hosts have a monitor in front of them that shows the number of orders being placed at any given moment so they know when to push the right buttons or say the right thing to cause more interest or generate more sales. It's also been proven that when they use certain buzzwords or phrases, or when David Venable on QVC does his little happy dance, for instance, incoming calls and orders spike.

Similarly, I'm sure the folks running this telethon (and others similar) 40 years ago also had the ability to see the number of calls coming in and the level of $$ being pledged and also knew which types of programming or commentary was most effective.
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Having worked at one of the shopping networks (JTV) I can vouch for that. Yes the hosts can see the number of orders coming in, calls on hold, etc, etc, and the one thing that gets the phone to ring is FREE SHIPPING! (people were constantly arguing that the host said free shipping when he or she didn't). Even in a show with more expensive items, they'd throw something up with $19,99 and free shipping (the hope being the phone rep would upsell them to something additional which I sucked at). If it got too busy they'd put out an urgent text for additional at-home agents to jump on the phone. (Literally there are people who won't buy anything without free shipping, and sometimes buy what they really aren't that into if it has free shipping).
 
Mikey Radio said:
Similarly, I'm sure the folks running this telethon (and others similar) 40 years ago also had the ability to see the number of calls coming in and the level of $$ being pledged and also knew which types of programming or commentary was most effective.
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Very similar to the folks at PBS who know what to program during pledge months, and how long the breaks should be.

They do it because it works. It's not a hobby.
 
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