1938s War of the Worlds broadcast

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Watched a PBS documentary last night on this.
I remember my parents talking about this years ago. They were kids then and they told me the “panic” was greatly exaggerated, and most people they talked to knew it was a radio show. Basically it was hyped by the newspapers at the time.
Anyone else remember their parents/grandparents recollections?
 
JustaServant said:
Watched a PBS documentary last night on this.
I remember my parents talking about this years ago. They were kids then and they told me the “panic” was greatly exaggerated, and most people they talked to knew it was a radio show. Basically it was hyped by the newspapers at the time.
Anyone else remember their parents/grandparents recollections?
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My grandmother thought it to be a non event. But she also stated that there were indeed some people in her town, who jumped to their deaths in fear and others who were also scared out of their minds.
It may be that most people did hear the barely mentioned disclaimer, if I remember that bit of information correctly. But those people don’t make the news. Suicides and hype do.
As I understand it, some rules were changed regarding like programing. Like many more disclaimers throughout the programming…
 
Many people turned into another radio station and when they heard nothing of this story, they figured out that it was a piece of fiction.

The great lesson of the event is that mass media CAN manipulate and people are EASILY manipulated.
 
coachdennis said:
Many people turned into another radio station and when they heard nothing of this story, they figured out that it was a piece of fiction.

The great lesson of the event is that mass media CAN manipulate and people are EASILY manipulated.
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AMEN!!! I agree %100. God Bless, Memaw
 
coachdennis said:
Many people turned into another radio station and when they heard nothing of this story, they figured out that it was a piece of fiction.

The great lesson of the event is that mass media CAN manipulate and people are EASILY manipulated.
Click to expand...
Turning the station is what my parents said most people did. Mercury Theater wasn’t even that popular a radio show then, it was up against a popular sitcom as the time about a ventriloquist.
The funny part of it is, after 75 years, the media still overhypes it. And they seem to be of the opinion that it doesn’t happen today.
Actually, with the internet, manipulation happens a lot faster.
 
cheezey said:
As I understand it, some rules were changed regarding like programing.
Click to expand...
Actually they specifically made it illegal to broadcast a scripted fictional program as if it appears as a genuine News Broadcast, or could be mistaken as such.

The law also applies to television.
 
There was a documentary on it last week, broadcast on my NPR station (and the original War of the Worlds broadcast that night.)

According to the documentary, there were some poles taken after the broadcast and 1.7 million people (nation wide) believed it, and 1.2 were afraid because of it. The documentary felt that the .5 million people who weren’t afraid were lying to the pole takers. 🙂

The documentary also said that Orson Welles left the radio theater expecting to be arrested for causing a panic.

Tom A.
 
I asked my grandparents about this once before, years ago, and they also knew alot of people that were very scared, they said they turned off the house lights and locked the doors!!

Alot of people believed it was only on one station because that one particular station just happened to be the one who broke the story, this would explain why it was not on any other stations, have to remember it was different back then.
 
A Peruvian radio station duplicated the broadcast, in Spanish, years later. It caused such panic the locals burned the radio station down to the ground.
 
Something nobody has mention, probably because we don’t wish to insult, but was the reaction different for city folk as opposed to rural?
Not saying rural folk are more gullible, but it is a good question.
 
Possibly rural people had much less access to media back then, so there were fewer chances to cross-check information.

There was a pretty good made for TV movie about the broadcast that was shown on TV on 10/31/76, “The Night That Panicked America,” which showed how they broadcast the show (to get the echoey effect of the Martian cylinders unscrewing, one of the sound FX guys took a mike into the CBS studios restroom and unscrewed a mason jar inside a toilet bowl), alternating with fictionalized accounts of the reactions of different characters in American society - including a young Catholic man who wants to marry a minister’s daughter, against his wishes (“I will not allow my daughter to marry a…papist!”) The actor who played the young Orson Welles was really good. A lot of people had pre-war jitters, heard a little of the broadcast, and thought the Germans were attacking.
 
My grandmother said she heard it, she & her mother started praying the rosary.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people heard part of the show and panicked but from what I’ve read there were announcements during commercial breaks that it was a fictional dramatisation.

I doubt many were panicked for too long. If our grand or great-grandparents heard the broadcast they probably checked other networks as well for their coverage of the Martian invasion.
 
colliric said:
Actually they specifically made it illegal to broadcast a scripted fictional program as if it appears as a genuine News Broadcast, or could be mistaken as such.

The law also applies to television.
Click to expand...
Source?

There was a scripted fictional program on National Geographic, “American Blackout,” which was on TV the same night as the PBS special. In 2013. With real TV news anchors from the local Fox affiliate. How was that legal?
variety.com/2013/tv/reviews/tv-review-american-blackout-war-of-the-worlds-tapping-into-fear-in-different-eras-1200748114/
 
In the early 80s there was a made for TV movie, Special Bulletin about domestic terrorists threatening to set off a nuke in Charleston harbor.
Even though it it was advertised for weeks there was still a jolt when the words “special bulletin” came on.
 
When Gilligan’s Island was in its original run, the coast guard received hundreds of letters begging them to rescue those poor people! Go figure…🙂
 
I asked older members of my family about this several years ago.They said they never heard anything about it.They lived in a rural area of California,so possibly the show was not broadcast on the West Coast.
 
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