Some fund raisers use the long-running Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon—which just completed its 45th Labor Day broadcast—as a barometer of the fund-raising environment they face as the crucial fund-raising season is about to start.

This year’s telethon shows the forecast was tepid at best.

When the telethon officially ended yesterday, the broadcast had raised $58.9-million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, or about $1.5-million less than the $60.5-million it generated last year. The televised event’s record was $65-million in 2008.

The telethon, which raises about a third of the contributions received by the Muscular Dystrophy Association in any given year, reaches 40 million viewers and is broadcast on 170 television stations. For that reason, said Jim Brown, the charity’s vice president for public relations, “it is a very good benchmark for how Americans might respond to an appeal.”