NEW YORK — Horrified by the mounting toll of Hurricane Katrina, an array of musicians and prominent entertainers are jumping to participate in a series of relief concerts that will benefit victims in the devastated Gulf Coast region.
But the efforts have been less unified than Hollywood's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when dozens of stars participated in a single two-hour telethon that ran simultaneously on all the broadcast television networks and more than 31 cable channels. That event, which drew close to 90 million viewers, raised more than $100 million for victims.
This time, NBC Universal and Viacom Inc. announced plans Wednesday to televise separate benefit concerts in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, ABC, CBS and Fox are putting together their own event for early next week, according to officials at the networks, which NBC said it would gladly participate in too.
The first benefit is scheduled to be held Friday night, when NBC hosts "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," featuring artists with ties to the region. The hour-long telethon will air live at 8 p.m. EDT (and tape-delayed at 8 p.m. on the West Coast) on NBC and its sister cable channels MSNBC and CNBC.
NBC announced the event hours before Viacom sent out a news release with details about its own benefit concert, scheduled to air Sept. 10 on three of its cable channels: MTV, VH1 and CMT, a country music channel.
Representatives of the various companies attributed the separate events to efforts to put together fundraisers quickly to help the victims.
NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said other networks were welcome to participate in Friday's concert and broadcast a feed of the event.
"The more money, the more efforts, the more benefits for the victims," Marks said. "This is no way an exclusionary event. It's about charity and helping people."
The network organized the benefit after musician Harry Connick Jr., who has family in Louisiana who were affected by the storm, called NBC Universal Chief Executive Bob Wright and NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker on Tuesday and asked if they could assemble a concert to assist the victims.
In January, a similar two-hour concert organized by NBC to raise money for victims of the tsunami in southeast Asia brought in estimated pledges of $18.3 million for the American Red Cross International Response Fund.
