Friday, January 22nd at 8:00 pm ET approximately 100 top stars, mostly from the music industry, will entertain viewers in a televised and Internet streamed fund raiser for the victims of last week’s earthquake in Haiti. The telethon is titled “Hope for Haiti Now”.
Slated to perform in the two-hour telethon, which was organized by MTV and George Clooney, are artists Coldplay, Alycia Keys, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Wyclef Jean, Bono, The Edge, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Shakira, Dave Matthews, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Sting, Keith Urban, Stevie Wonder, and many others. The organizational efforts appear to have reached out to musicians, and thereby fans, from a broad range of genres, maximizing their target audience.
The stars will perform live from locations around the globe such as New York, Los Angeles, London, and Haiti. Other major players in film and television will be on hand to give testimonials and answer phones.
Online webcasts will be available courtesy of TV.com, Rhapsody, Bing, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, Fancast, AOL, VH1, MSN, CBS, BET, and CNN. AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, FloTV, and Sprint will make the broadcast available on their mobile wireless networks. Gigya, in cooperation with MTV, will offer a live chat service for viewers to interact during the telethon. Facebook and MySpace will lend their powerful hands to promoting the event.
Collaborative performances between several of the key stars involved will be available the following day on iTunes for $.99.
On television, the commercial-free event will be viewable on Comedy Central, Bravo, Style, Discovery Health, CBS, FOX, ABC, Palladia, SoapNet, NBC, MLB Network, Epix, CNN, Current TV, Fuse, BET, CW, Oxygen, G4, Centric, HBO, Showtime, VH1, MTV, CMT, PBS, TNT, E! Entertainment Network, National Geographic, and Planet Green. Broadcasts will also be available in Canada and internationally. It will also be the first U.S. telethon to air in China. Overall, “Hope for Haiti Now” will be the most widely-broadcast telethon in history.
All donations raised will go towards Oxfam America, Red Cross, UNICEF, Partners in Health, Wyclef’s Yele Haiti Foundation, Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, and United Nations World Food Programme.
Organizer Clooney urged people to get involved in the many efforts to aid Haiti. He said, “I would say, ‘Get involved, whatever you do. This is about compassion. There are times in our lives when people are really without help and in real danger, and this is one of those times. So whatever they can do, give money to one of the organizations that they like the best.” [Mashable via MTV.com]
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