are preparing to go on-air with the WHAS Crusade for Children; this one is the
Highview, Kentucky Fire Dept.The backbone of the collection efforts, and the signature of the Crusade itself, are the dozens of local
fire departments who collect millions of dollars each year. Most of those donations come at road blocks set up at hundreds of
intersections throughout the region, where
firefighters ask motorists to put donations in boots. On a Saturday or Sunday in late spring, it's not uncommon for someone driving across metro Louisville to encounter multiple road blocks staffed by volunteers. During the telethon, each fire department brings in those donations, dumping them out of the boots and into "fishbowls" (
aquarium-like containers) before the cameras. Before the "dump," a representative from each department usually reads a list of significant contributors, businesses who helped the department during fund-raising efforts, and numerous others who helped in any way, a process which can be lengthy. Crusade organizers have tried to streamline the process of the years in the same way awards shows have attempted to reduce acceptance speeches to reduce time, to mixed results. In the past, the fire departments brought the collections directly to the television studio, parading their trucks down the street outside with sirens blaring. But the number of participating departments has become so large that in recent years,
remote broadcasts are set up in outlying communities such as
Elizabethtown,
Corydon and elsewhere, which also allows those fire departments to keep their equipment and trucks in their areas to allow emergency deployment. The increase in fire department donations forced the Crusade to broadcast a pre-telethon show, featuring the departmental reports and remotes from across the area. In 2007, Crusade organizers simply moved the official start of the broadcast to 1:30 p.m. local time, with a one-hour break for local and network
newscasts. The 2008 Crusade followed a similar schedule, except for a two-hour break Saturday afternoon for the
ABC broadcast of the
2008 Belmont Stakes; the telethon broadcast its final total during halftime of Sunday night's ABC broadcast of Game 2 of the
2008 NBA Finals. In 2011 the Crusade ended at 6:30 p.m., in order to clear the
2011 NBA Finals, the earliest on-air finish in many years; since then, the telethon has ended at or near the same time, mainly because of the NBA Finals commitment. Departments compete each year to win the Jim Walton Trophy, given to departments that record the largest percentage increase in donations from the previous year. The trophy is named for Jim Walton, a
WHAS-TV personality who was the Crusade's
master of ceremonies for 26 years and was its first executive director. Fire department collections typically account for more than half of the Crusade's final total each year. ==On-air performers==