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Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon preview

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Smasher_Sloan, Sep 4, 2009.

  1. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    Per TV writer Mark Evanier's blog:

    <i> • Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 12:20 AM · LINK
    This Weekend, It's Jerry Time!
    Speaking of Jerry Lewis — as I was in the wee small hours of the morning — his annual Labor Day Telethon is this weekend. As usual, it'll be different lengths in different cities. I'll be receiving two separate feeds on my little DirecTV satellite dish. KCAL, the Los Angeles affiliate, is running it from 6 PM Sunday night through 5 PM on Monday for a total of 23 hours. WGN in Chicago is running it from 8 PM Sunday night (L.A. time) 'til 9:30 AM when they stop for a baseball game. They resume with Jerry whenever the game ends, which TiVo says will be 12:30 PM and then it runs 'til 5 PM. Assuming the game is three hours, that's 18 hours. The San Francisco station, which I can't get on my satellite, is only running eight hours.

    The P.R. handouts seem to have stopped describing the telethon as being any particular length. Last year, they said it was 21 and a half hours but KCAL ran a 23 hour version and WGN aired 18. Since large chunks of the overnight programming are reruns from earlier in the telethon, it can be almost any length, and I have no idea how many hours they actually do.

    Announced as performers are Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Tony Orlando, Charo, Wynonna, Train, Bo Bice, Terry Fator, George Wallace, Lee Greenwood, Three Dog Night and many more. Betcha Dolly, Reba and maybe a few others aren't there on stage but instead pre-taped special numbers as part of concerts they were doing somewhere. There will be a tribute to Ed McMahon which will be repeated several times during the show.

    A friend of mine tells me that this year, Jerry doesn't want any men on the stage with him; that all his co-hosts will be women like Nancy O'Dell and Jann Carl. But all the publicity still mentions Tom Bergeron as a co-host so I don't know what that means.

    I'll tune in. I'll send some money. But I'll probably finding myself waxing nostalgic for the day when it was a much bigger show with much bigger guests.</i>
     
  2. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    The guests were always largely people whose time had passed. In the case of Charo and Three Dog Night, it's a third generation of being Z-list. But when it was a three-network nation, the telethon was a big-ass phenomenon that the local station that had it would promote heavily and use its news stars for remotes.
     
  3. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    Telethon changed forever sometime in the '80s when the MDA people flexed their muscles and wrung out a lot of Jerry's excesses, which were what made it fascinating in a train wreck kind of way.

    Suddenly there were a lot of "helpers" to keep things moving and to rein in Jerry when he got a little too weird.

    Then Jerry's health problems made it impossible for him to do the whole thing, and that took something away, too. Now it will be decidedly different without Ed McMahon.
     
  4. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    To me, the best part of the telethon is seeing some of the local newsbabes wearing evening gowns.

    Used to love watching telethons, the Cerebral Palsy one that John Ritter hosted for a few years back in the late 70s, the Easter Seals telethon, now Golden Girls marathons get more attention during holiday weekends. I'll watch this weekend for the Ed tribute, maybe wait until Jerry unties his bowtie and breaks out his guilt-trip monologue.
     
  5. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Tebow, I haven't thought of Jerry's telethon since probably eighth grade.
     
  6. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    Which year of eighth grade?
     
  7. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Damn, why all these tough questions?
     
  8. HackyMcHack

    HackyMcHack Member

    I just have to wonder how much longer this thing will run -- if at all -- once Jerry's number finally comes up in the death pool ... a pool that he has defied for several years now. As for Tom, is he going to be Jerry's morning relief host or is he going to fill the role of Ed, introducing the endless string of 7-11 regional vice presidents in charge of Slurpee operations .....

    And, yes, the telethon was much better 25-30 years ago. A little Jerry, Ed and Sammy clip from YouTube:
     
  9. OTD

    OTD Well-Known Member

    I think the stations kind of hack it up and play it as they please. I've noticed in the past few years that going back and forth between the local station and WGN that it's not playing the same thing at the same time, even when it's the national feed instead of the local cutaways.

    I used to love watching it in high school when it was the only TV on all night. It seemed like they had more entertainment, less MDA film and fewer corporate suits then as well.
     
  10. Pancamo

    Pancamo Active Member

    Is his head still huge?
     
  11. kokane_muthashed

    kokane_muthashed Active Member

    At first glance, I thought the thread title was Jenny Lewis Labor Day Telethon and I got excited.
     
  12. HackyMcHack

    HackyMcHack Member

    Nope. His head got big because of painkillers he was on for his back. They eventually installed something in him where he could deal with his back issues with an electronic microshock (my grandmother presently is getting one of those installed), and once they got that to work they got him off painkillers and his weight went down.
     
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