The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated new bulletins which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the program ran without commercial breaks, thus adding to the dramatic effect. Thousands of listeners were frightened and the news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures.
Some six million people heard the CBS broadcast – a relatively small audience (in the same period, NBC’s audience was an estimated 30 million) – and within a month there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact. Some people called CBS, newspapers or the police in confusion over the realism of the news bulletin. Welles and the Mercury Theatre escaped punishment but not censure. The episode launched Welles to fame.
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