The War of the Worlds (radio)

:{{Otheruses3|The War of the Worlds}}

Influence

It is sometimes said that the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was first received in skepticism by the American public, as a consequence of the radio performance.

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Amazingly enough, the drama has been rewritten to apply to other locations and rebroadcast, with similar results.

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A 1944 broadcast in Santiago, Chile caused panic, including mobilization of troops by the governor.

Related Topics:
1944 - Santiago - Chile

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A February 12 1949 broadcast in Quito, Ecuador panicked tens of thousands

Related Topics:
February 12 - 1949 - Quito, Ecuador

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http://www.swl.net/patepluma/south/ecuador/martians.html. Some listeners, enraged at the deception, set fire to the radio station and the offices of El Comercio, the capital's leading newspaper, killing twenty people. The property damage was estimated at $350,000. Three officials charged with responsibility for the broadcast were arrested.

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Because of the panic caused in the 1930s and 1940s by this radio play, TV networks have deemed it necessary to post bulletins to their viewing audience to inform them some TV stories were in fact fictional drama, and not really happening. Disclaimers of this sort were shown during broadcasts of the 1983 television movie Special Bulletin and again during the 1994 telefilm, Without Warning, both of which were dramas disguised as realistic news broadcasts (Without Warning, presenting an alien attack on earth, acknowledged that it was a tribute to War of the Worlds and was also broadcast at Halloween). NBC placed disclaimers in an October 1999 TV movie dramatizing the possible disastrous effects of the Y2K bug even though it was obviously drama and was unlikely to be confused with reality.

Related Topics:
1930s - 1940s - 1983 - Television - Special Bulletin - 1994 - Without Warning - NBC - October - 1999 - Y2K bug

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The radio play's success in updating the story proved so impressionable that many adaptations of The War of the Worlds have done likewise.

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