A telethon (a portmanteau of "television" and "marathon") is a televised fundraising event that lasts many hours or days, the purpose of which is to raise money for a charitable, political or other cause.
Most telethons feature heavy solicitations for pledges (promises to donate funds at a later time) by masters of ceremonies or hosts, who are often local celebrities or media personalities combined with variety show style entertainment such as singers, bands and instrumentalists. In some cases, telethons feature content related to the cause being supported, such as interviews with charitable beneficiaries, tours of charity-supported projects, or pre-taped sequences. The equivalent term for a radio broadcast is a radiothon; most radiothons do not include live entertainment.
In the United States, the first telethon used for political outreach occurred in 1960.
The highest donating telethon per capita in the world is the Channel Seven Perth Telethon in Perth, Western Australia. It has raised over AU$750 million since 1968, and raised AU$90.1 million in 2025.
The most watched Telethon in the world is Teletón Chile in the nation of Chile to raise funds to help children with developmental disabilities. Since its beginning in 1978, it has raised almost CL$300 billion (US$286 million) from the citizens of the nation and international viewers in all parts of the world, and raised US$50.4 million in 2024.
History
United States On April 9, 1949, Milton Berle hosted the first-ever telethon, raising $1,100,000 for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation over the course of 16 hours. The first published appearance of the word "telethon" was in the prior day's newspapers.
One of the first continuing annual telethons in the United States was the United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) telethon. Television executive Leonard Goldenson and his wife had a daughter with cerebral palsy, and with the help of other affected parents, launched the UCP Telethon in 1950, with early television personality Dennis James as host. He continued to host New York-based segments on the telethon through the 1980s. The telethon is now defunct, as UCP raises funds through other means, including its website. By 1955 televised telethons had become a familiar enough part of American culture to be parodied that year in the film noir Tight Spot as comic relief.
The oldest continuing annual telethon in the United States on the same channel is Green Bay, Wisconsin, station WBAY-TV (channel 2)'s local Cerebral Palsy telethon,2017: 2020: which helps provide financial support for equipment for Cerebral Palsy, Inc., that began broadcasting as a 22-hour event on the first weekend of March 1954. As of 2025, WBAY has presented the telethon for 71 years.
Close behind the Green Bay telethon in longevity is the WHAS Crusade for Children in Louisville, Kentucky, which began in October 1954 on WHAS-TV (channel 11) and WHAS radio (840 AM). It is still broadcast on the two WHAS stations despite their being owned by different entities for three decades, and has expanded to radio and TV stations in other parts of Kentucky and Indiana, as well as a live stream on the internet. The Crusade is famous for the legions of firefighters who collect money at intersections throughout the area each May and June.
The most-broadcast telethon to date was January 22, 2010, Hope for Haiti Now telethon, to aid the victims of the January 10th earthquake. Viewers were able to text donations on cell phones, and it raised a reported $58 million by the next day. It was designed to show viewers a stark divide between them and the people surviving this catastrophic event.
Australia Melbourne's Good Friday Appeal, which began in 1931, started its telethon in 1957 after the Seven Network joined as a sponsor.
Adelaide's first telethon was held at the Tynte Street, North Adelaide, studios of NWS9 in December 1960. One fundraiser was Barry Jones, then famous as a quiz champion. Viewers could, for a fee, attempt to "stump" him with their favorite question.
Prior to the establishment of their annual telethon in 1968, Perth station TVW broadcast one-off telethons for bushfire relief in 1961, and to raise funds for Christmas care packages sent to Western Australian soldiers serving in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967.
Examples
The Americas
United States In the United States, telethons are held for various charitable organizations; as of 2014, however, no national telethons currently exist.
The longest-running national telethon in the United States was The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, which was staged for over 21 hours each Labor Day to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association between 1966 and 2010. From 2011 to 2013 it was trimmed down to six hours, then to three, and then to two hours. From 2012 it no longer served as a telethon in the traditional sense. It was discontinued in 2014. Other prior charities such as the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Easter Seals, Arthritis Foundation, and the Children's Miracle Network had produced telethons on a nationwide or regional basis.
Some radio 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 (TBN), a religious television network, hosts non-stop, week-long, semi-annual telethons called "Praise-a-Thons". The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN; producers of the long-running syndicated program The 700 Club) stages a modified form of a telethon thrice yearly, 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 round-the-clock form; this format ended when the Pat Robertson-founded ministry sold The Family Channel (now Freeform), which no longer gave it access to a round-the-clock outlet for such telethons. However, on the Sunday before the Super Bowl, CBN continues to produce a 12-hour telethon which airs on Freeform and is syndicated to various television stations; the broadcast of the program on the cable channel was a condition inserted in a 1998 deal by International Family Entertainment (which acquired the channel from CBN in 1990) to sell The Family Channel to News Corporation, and remained in place after the channel's 2001 sale to The Walt Disney Company. Other religious stations and networks hold telethons as well, including West Coast Chabad Lubavitch since 1980.
For a brief time in the early 1970s, beginning in 1972, the Democratic Party even held annual telethons (two were called "America Goes Public" and "Answer, America!") to help it erase a multi-million dollar debt (this may have provided the inspiration for the 1979 comedy film Americathon, where a telethon is held to prevent national bankruptcy). The telethon idea was created and promoted by John Y. Brown, Jr., the businessman who built Kentucky Fried Chicken into a worldwide chain and later became Governor of Kentucky.
Local telethons, once a common fixture in nearly every major city in the United States, are now rare but still found in a handful of cities, including Louisville, Kentucky (WHAS Crusade for Children), Buffalo, New York (the Variety Club Telethon, held each winter for Variety, the Children's Charity; it began on what is now WGRZ in 1962 before spending most of its run on WKBW-TV from 1963 to 2019 and then moving back to WGRZ in 2020, with WBBZ-TV added as a broadcast partner that year); Green Bay, Wisconsin (WBAY-TV's annual March telethon for the locally based Cerebral Palsy Center); and Erie, Pennsylvania (the Community for Kanzius Telethon on WICU and WSEE for the Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation). New York City also features a telethon of sorts; the WFAN Radiothon, by virtue of its two drive time shows being simulcast on cable television, has portions covered on television. Since 2010, this has included the portion covering Boomer and Carton in the Morning on CBS Sports Network and Mike's On on Fox Sports 1/2. From 2002 to 2007, the shows in question were Imus in the Morning on MSNBC and Mike and the Mad Dog on YES; Imus revived the practice of hosting radiothons on his most recent radio broadcast homes, WABC and Fox Business Network.
Garden City High School in Garden City, Kansas, holds annual telethons to help fund the school's broadcasting, debate and forensics teams.
On December 14, 2012, Univision introduced the first ever Spanish-language telethon in the United States, Teletón USA, which is hosted by longtime Sábado Gigante host Mario Kreutzberger, known by his stage name Don Francisco. The total donation in the first edition was $8,150,625, 16.44% more than the intended goal of $7,000,000. For its 2013 edition, the goal went up to $15,215,029 and the total donation is now $15,313,525, a $98,496 increase.
Canada There are no annual national telethons in Canada, although as in the U.S., many local children's hospitals operate regional telethons in collaboration with Children's Miracle Network Hospitals in early June. In addition, due to the proliferation of cable television piping in signals from the United States, a number of American telethons, such as the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, attracted donations from Canada due to being broadcast there.
Notable regional telethons (outside of those produced by Children's Miracle Network) include: Telemiracle (March) in Saskatchewan benefiting the Kinsmen Foundation and currently seen on CTV stations in Saskatchewan. Since its inception in 1977, Telemiracle has raised over $100 million, including the record $7.1 million in the 2018 edition, held in Regina. Christmas Daddies (December), benefiting underprivileged children in Atlantic Canada and broadcast on CTV Atlantic stations. Show of Hearts (February) in British Columbia, supporting Variety, the Children's Charity and seen on CHAN-DT in Vancouver. CTV-Lion's Club Children's Christmas Telethon (December), buys Christmas presents for underprivileged children in Northern Ontario. The telethon is broadcast on CTV Northern Ontario stations and features local musical talent.
Chile
Since 1978, the major Chilean television networks hold an annual telethon called Teletón to raise funds to help children with developmental disabilities (most commonly cerebral palsy) in Instituto de Rehabilitación Infantil ("Infant Rehabilitation Institute") centers. Mario Kreutzberger, who is the symbol of "La Teletón" in Chile, has served as the telethon's host since its inception. The telethon is an event of national unity and is proportionally, the most widely watched and most donated telethon in the world, surpassing Australia's Telethon.
There is also a local telethon running, the Days for the Disabled Magellanic Children (Jornadas por el Niño Impedido Magallánico), to raise funds to help disabled children of the Magallanes and Última Esperanza provinces, in an effort led by the local Lions Club. The 2006 Days broadcast raised US$515,000.
During March 2010, a special telethon called Chile ayuda a Chile (Chile helps Chile) was broadcast to raise money to help those affected by a devastating earthquake that struck the southern part of central Chile on February 27 of that year. The aim was to raise $15,000,000,000 Chilean Pesos for the construction of 30 thousand emergency homes in the disaster area. In the end, that amount tripled, having been gathered over 46 billion Chilean pesos ($90 million), the biggest amount of money collected from a Telethon in history.
Honduras