The Briefing Room
General Category => Sports/Entertainment/MSM/Social Media => Topic started by: jmyrlefuller on September 02, 2012, 06:45:11 pm
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Exclusive: Without Jerry Lewis, MDA Couldn’t Collect 50% of Last Year’s Pledges
by Roger Friedman
September 1, 2012
Showbiz411.com (http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/09/01/exclusive-without-jerry-lewis-mda-couldnt-collect-50-of-last-years-pledges)
Exclusive: Jerry Lewis vs. the Muscular Dystrophy Association: after 50 plus years, MDA tossed Lewis out last year and replaced him as chairman of the charity and host of his famous Labor Day telethon. The 2011 telethon, shrunk to six hours from 21, was ghastly. When it was over MDA trumpeted that they’d made $61 million– up 4 percent from the prior year when Lewis was at the helm. MDA boasted it did better without Jerry.
Alas, it wasn’t true. MDA has just posted its 2011 federal tax form 990 on its website and this tells a much different story. MDA was only able to collect $31 million of that much publicized amount. Without Jerry Lewis to cajole or persuade or inviegle, exactly half the amount came in that was promised by the public. Whether people simply reneged, or never actually pledged that amount at all, remains to be seen.
MDA will argue this happens every year: the tote board total is never what actually comes in. But in 2010, MDA crowed about $58 million at the end of the telethon with Jerry; $48 million came in. In 2009, the first telethon after the recession, the shortfall was about $15 million–$60 million announced, $45 million arrived.
For last year, MDA lists gross receipts from the first non Jerry Lewis telethon at $30,683,816. The charitable contribution portion was 18,059,876 . This left a gross income of $12,623,940.
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I think it is terrible how they have cut him out of this..........
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I think it is terrible how they have cut him out of this..........
Well, it seems (at least at face value) to be typical Nigel Lythgoe. I think Lewis was in fact trying to set it up so he could take a less active role in the whole thing (he is, after all, in his 80s), but the MDA brought Lythgoe in and he started micromanaging everything. Lewis hated it and so he decided to up and quit.
After all the bastardization they've done to it lately (and then the gall to so blatantly overstate their total in the process), I don't blame Jerry for backing out.
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Back in the 1960's, with two cousins that had MD, our TV was always tuned into the Jerry Lewis telethon, and often us kids would collect money to send in, n their name. One of the girls appeared on the show and met Jerry. Sadly both girls died in their Teens, but our contributions continued, and so did Jerry. It was sad to see him replaced.