What's in a telethon

[marsden_online]

I missed out on most of the famous New Zealand telethons. My family didn't have a TV so my first experience was in 3rd form and beyond watching my involvement only extended to being pressured to contribute a few more dollars to the bucket so it reached the value at which a housemaster would let his beard be shaved off by the head house prefect (and I recall the prefects getting a few seconds on TV when they took that bucket down to the local collection centre). That would have been 1988. I may have donated money to the later national telethons, but wasn't at all involved in any fund raising projects.

Still, they somehow left an impression. So many people were involved spontaneously - either coming up with something to do on the day or turning up to one of the mass events. To me, that level of community involvement is what actually makes a telethon worthy of the name. You can have all the famous names, huge corporate sponsors, state of the art graphics with your transmission - but if you don't connect with and positively mobilise the community you are at best going to be a footnote in Wikipedia, and at worst going to poison the well for future telethons.

x-posted Gameathon