{"id":3139,"date":"2022-09-04T12:54:05","date_gmt":"2022-09-04T12:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3139"},"modified":"2022-09-04T12:54:06","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T12:54:06","slug":"telethons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3139","title":{"rendered":"Telethons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you\u2019re a long time reader and remember back to last year about this time, I talked about something we always did on Labor Day weekend when I was living at home with my parents. Back in those days, the Jerry Lewis telethon <em>was<\/em> Labor Day. I think it was really the Muscular Dystrophy telethon, but most people knew it as the Jerry Lewis telethon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jerry Lewis was the first host of the telethon, which first aired in 1956as a Thanksgiving Party. That year, he co-hosted the event with Dean Martin \u2013 it was held at Carnegie Hall. Lewis later became the organization\u2019s National chairman \u2014 for 55 years. The telethon was moved to Labor Day Weekend and it would begin airing on Sunday and would run overnight, ending on Monday (Labor Day.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association cut ties in 2010 and it\u2019s still not clear why the organization dropped him, but his departure was referred to as \u201csudden.\u201d Lewis was later asked why he left, but he refused to talk about it.<br>Jerry Lewis hosted his last Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 2010 \u2014 Lewis died in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the telethon\u2019s last broadcast was announced in 2015, MDA president and CEO Steven Derks noted the move was influenced by \u201cthe new realities of television viewing and philanthropic giving.\u201d<br>There have been several attempts to revive the telethon on local stations and social media, but none have proven very successful.<br>\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re a long time reader and remember back to last year about this time, I talked about something we always did on Labor Day weekend when I was living at home with my parents. Back in those days, the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3139\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3140,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}