  We present sum representations for all characters of the unitary Virasoro
minimal models. They can be viewed as fermionic companions of the Rocha-Caridi
sum representations, the latter related to the (bosonic) Feigin-Fuchs-Felder
construction. We also give fermionic representations for certain characters of
the general $(G^{(1)})_k \times (G^{(1)})_l \over (G^{(1)})_{k+l}}$ coset
conformal field theories, the non-unitary minimal models ${\cal M}(p,p+2)$ and
${\cal M}(p,kp+1)$, the $N$=2 superconformal series, and the
$\ZZ_N$-parafermion theories, and relate the $q\to 1$ behaviour of all these
fermionic sum representations to the thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz.
