Growing up, Labor Day always meant two things. It was the last weekend of summer, as school always started on the Tuesday after Labor Day and it meant the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon running continuously on the television in our living room. It's amazing what sticks with us over the years, but I can still vividly recall one rainy Labor Day weekend lying on the living room couch, the telethon playing in the background, reading Henry Reed books.
Over the years, the telethon aired for 21 1/2 hours starting Sunday evening and running through Labor Day. With Jerry Lewis as host, they aired over 900 hours of live television. 2010 was the last year that the MDA telethon was hosted by Jerry Lewis and at the end had raised $58,919,838 in pledges. The telethon has always reported pledges, which often fell short of the annual amount collected, which in 2010 was $48,000,000. Still, 48 million isn't an insignificant amount of money.
2011 was the first year without Jerry Lewis as host and the first year running for only 6 hours. The total pledges reported for the reduced run was $61,491,393, perhaps in an attempt to signal that nothing had changed corporate pledges were included in the total for the first time. In reality the money actually collected was only
$30,683,816, significantly down from the last "Jerry Lewis Telethon". In 2012 the show was reduced to 3 hours, and this year will be down for only 2 hours and only air on ABC.
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