Plans for George Clooney’s “Hope for Haiti” telethon have been slow to come together.
The philanthropic-minded actor is producing a two-hour, TV fundraiser this Friday night, featuring a line-up of some of today’s most popular actors and musicians.
But yesterday, there was still much confusion over who will be on the show, how millions in donations from viewers will be handled — even, for a while, how long the show would be.
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The telethon is scheduled to air on all five commercial networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW, as well as cable channels CNN, BET, MTV, VH1 and CMT.
The show will start at 8 p.m., from Los Angeles, with Clooney and Haitian-native musician Wyclef Jean hosting.
Jean will be in New York.
Details about which celebs will be appearing and their involvement in the telethon is still up in the air, but there is a preliminary lineup of performers.
Bono, Sting, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Alicia Keys are among the musicians scheduled to perform.
As of last night, the charities that are slated to receive the money are Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF and Jean’s own Yele Haiti Foundation.
“Hope for Haiti” will be the third national telethon that Clooney has helmed in the last nine years.
Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Clooney and film producer Joel Gallen produced “America: A Tribute to Heroes,” which raised more than $100 million for the victims of the attacks and their families.
Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, U2, Celine Dion, Willie Nelson and Stevie Wonder performed and Hollywood big shots like Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise answered the phones to collect donations.
The two-hour telethon aired on 35 broadcast and cable networks and was seen by 59.3 million people.
Clooney did it again in January 2005 with “Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope,” benefiting the American Red Cross International Response Fund’s efforts in South Asia following the New Year’s tsunami victims.
Seen by 19.5 million viewers, the two-hour telethon — which aired only on NBC and its owned cable channels, USA, Bravo, PAX, MSNBC, CNBC and the SciFi Channel — raised $18.3 million.