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By Times staff and wire reports
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 23, 2001
Telethon attracted 89-million viewers
Almost 90-million people watched at least some of a star-filled telethon on Friday night to raise money for injured victims and the families of people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Barbara Brogliatti, a spokeswoman for the event, said Saturday there was no estimate of how much money was raised.
The Nielsen Media Research audience measurement service said 89-million people watched the telethon for at least six minutes. At any give time, Nielsen said, the telethon had an audience of 59-million people.
The audience was far higher than that of the Academy Awards show in March (43-million people) and the season finale of the hit program Survivor on CBS in May (36-million people). But the telethon's audience was not as large as that of the Super Bowl, which was watched by 84-million people, or President Bush's speech to the nation on Thursday night, watched by an average audience of 82-million people.
LAKE BUENA VISTA -- There were lines to get on the monorail at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World and half-hour waits to ride the Space Mountain coaster.
Attendance plunged after the attacks in New York and Washington, so the turnout Saturday at the nation's most popular theme offered a glimmer of hope for Florida's tourism industry.
Workers and guests estimated that the Magic Kingdom was about three-fourths full Saturday, a vast improvement over the quarter-full attendance the park experienced earlier last week. However, Universal's Islands of Adventure park and SeaWorld Orlando was only about half full, according to guests and workers.
NO SOLICITATIONS: Laws are laws, even in times of tragedy.
That's the message being relayed to members of Congress as they try to find ways to help victims of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Members, particularly those from the New York delegation, have been asking Americans to make donations to various disaster relief charities. Thus far they have used their office fax machines and their Web sites, but have been forbidden from writing an official letter.
Members of Congress are allowed to send mail free of charge to their constituents, a practice known as franking. But the chairman of the House Administration Committee told members last week that using government resources to ask for funds is prohibited, no matter the cause.
"It is a violation of law to use the frank to solicit contributions in support of any charitable organization or purpose," wrote Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio.
In the meantime, many members have taken to posting links to organizations like the Red Cross, the Fireman's Fund and the United Way of New York on their Web sites.
NO INTERVIEW: Voice of America, a federally supported international broadcasting organization, decided Friday not to air a story that included parts of a rare interview with the leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, officials said Saturday.
The move came after Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and senior National Security Council officials contacted members of the VOA's board of governors to express concern that airing the interview would amount to granting a platform to terrorists.
NEW YORK -- Millions of dollars worth of art, including works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Joan Miro and Roy Lichtenstein, was damaged or destroyed by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
The works, reportedly worth about $10-million, include a bright red 25-foot Calder sculpture, the 1971 Red Stabile, at 7 World Trade Center; a painted wood relief by Nevelson titled Sky Gate, New York, which hung in 1 World Trade Center; a painting by Lichtenstein from his Entablature series that had been in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center; and Miro's World Trade Center tapestry from 1974 that was on display in 2 World Trade Center.