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A telethon is a fundraising event broadcast on television that lasts many hours or even days, the purpose of which is to raise money for a charitable, political, or other allegedly worthy cause. Correspondingly, the term is a portmanteau of "television" and "marathon."
Format
The format of a telethon usually consists of performances by singers, musicians, comedians, or other entertainers interspersed with pitches for donations. Typically the program is staged on a set containing volunteer telephone operators, a stage, a tote board that displays the amount of money raised, a band, and a studio audience.
Examples
Telethons are held for various organisations around the world. In the United States, telethons are held for groups such as Muscular Dystrophy Associations (hosted by Jerry Lewis and held each Labor Day weekend), the St. Jude Children's Hospital; the Children's Miracle Network, the Shriners, Armenia Fund, and Chabad.
The Public Broadcasting Service and its member stations produce annual pledge drives which are similar in format to telethons, but instead use brief breaks between regular programs to appeal for funds.
Trinity Broadcasting Network, a religious television network, hosts non-stop, week-long, semi-annual telethons called "Praise-a-Thons". The Christian Broadcasting Network stages a modified form of a telethon twice a year, which runs for approximately one week but is shown for only an hour or so each day. (In its early days, CBN's telethons were of the more traditional form; this format ended when the ministry sold its CBN Family Channel, which no longer gave it access to a round-the-clock outlet for such telethons.)
In the United Kingdom, regular telethons are held for charitable groups such as Comic Relief and the BBC's Children in Need.
In Mexico every December of each year since 1997 the national TV Network Televisa holds a telethon for raising funds to help handicapped children in called "CRIT ( Centro de Rehabilitaciòn Integral Teleton ) Centers". This idea of telethon was inspired by another who celebrates every year in Chile and Brazil with the same objectives.
The most successful annual telethon on a per-capita in the world is run over 25 hours in Western Australia by Seven Perth for the Princess Margaret Children's Hospital, Perth.
In 2004, Armenia Fund held an international Telethon that was broadcasted to all major U.S. cities and across the globe. The 12 hour live program was able to raise a record $11.5 million for humanitarian and infrastructure development programs in Armenia and Karabakh. That annual telethon is held on Thanksgiving every year.
The 2004 Asian Tsunami also led to telethons being held in countries such as Canada (CTV), United States (NBC) and Australia (a joint telecast between the Seven Network, Nine Network and Network Ten).
Other types
Another type of telethon is used to provide income for broadcasting and organizational expenses for broadcasting companies who rely not on advertising, but on the willingness of the viewers to support the company and the broadcasts. In the United States, these stations usually broadcast educational, cultural or religious programming.
History
The oldest continuing annual telethon in the United States on the same channel is Green Bay, Wisconsin WBAY-TV's local Cerebral Palsy telethon that began broadcasting 22 hours on the first weekend of March 1954. As of 2006, they have celebrated their 52nd year of presenting the telethon, which helps provide financial support for equipment for Cerebral Palsy, Inc.
Close behind the Green Bay telethon in longevity is the WHAS Crusade for Children in Louisville, Kentucky, which broadcast its first telethon in October 1954 on WHAS-TV and WHAS Radio, six months after the first WBAY telethon. While the Crusade for Children is still broadcast on those same stations, it has expanded to radio and television stations in other parts of Kentucky and Indiana, as well as streaming video on the Internet. The Crusade is famous for the legions of firefighters who collect money at road blocks at intersections throughout the area each May and June. The Crusade annually collects more than $5 million in donations for a variety of child-related charities and causes, and remains the most successful local telethon in the United States.
In the United States, it was common in the early days of television for local stations to produce their own telethons benefitting various charities or causes. As satellite transmission made nationwide telethons practical, local telethons fell out of favor, and most were discontinued with the stations instead affiliating with the MDA or Easter Seals telethons. Only a handful of locally-produced telethins remain, with the Green Bay and Louisville efforts being the most prominent.
"Telethon"