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CKWW to Air 'War of the Worlds' tonight

U

umfan

Star Participant
580 AM to air ‘The War of the Worlds’
If you tune into 580 AM on Halloween night, do not panic. Aliens are not actually invading the United States. Continuing its annual tradition, the radio station will broadcast “The War of the Worlds” — the famous radio play narrated by Orson Welles, based on H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel about an alien invasion. When the program first aired in 1938, the fictional newscasts were so believable that Americans across the country feared martians had landed in New Jersey. Tune in to hear the drama at 8 p.m. Monday.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/en...pevine-mariah-carey-ex-james-packer/92901188/

Continues a great annual tradition!
 
umfan said:
When the program first aired in 1938, the fictional newscasts were so believable that Americans across the country feared martians had landed in New Jersey.
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Oh, no! Is that myth still alive? Radio people love it and are addicted to repeating this patently false story. I guess it makes radio types feel important, powerful and influential and reinforces their view that the audience is gullible and easily (mis)led. Orson Welles built his career on this fable, so it's not surprising that he liked it.
 
One of the things that was so sad about this program was that announcements were made prior to airing and during breaks that it was a radio play and not an actual event. The upcoming election makes me think we have not progressed much from a nation of 1938 idiots.
 
landtuna said:
One of the things that was so sad about this program was that announcements were made prior to airing and during breaks that it was a radio play and not an actual event. The upcoming election makes me think we have not progressed much from a nation of 1938 idiots.
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You assume people listened to the whole program. The show was sustaining and had a small audience, up against the most popular show in radio at the time. You also assume that CBS was a "major network" at the time. In audience and revenue it trailed both NBC networks and Mutual. If a show on CBS got some buzz, the sponsor moved it to NBC.
 
landtuna said:
One of the things that was so sad about this program was that announcements were made prior to airing and during breaks that it was a radio play and not an actual event. The upcoming election makes me think we have not progressed much from a nation of 1938 idiots.
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Hey! That's the Greatest Generation you're calling idiots there!
 
Oscar Madison said:
You assume people listened to the whole program. The show was sustaining and had a small audience, up against the most popular show in radio at the time. You also assume that CBS was a "major network" at the time. In audience and revenue it trailed both NBC networks and Mutual. If a show on CBS got some buzz, the sponsor moved it to NBC.
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I am assuming most Americans have a modicum of common sense. It was evidently an erroneous assumption.
 
CTListener said:
Hey! That's the Greatest Generation you're calling idiots there!
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My parents are included in the Greatest Generation and my father sustained a life-threatening wound in the Battle of Leyte. He was out working to support his family as a young lad of 21 in 1938 so I doubt he had time for radio shows. My mother had just watched her father die of a heart attack (he was a doctor but apparently tended to overwork himself) so I doubt she was listening to the Welles drama either. There were obviously many other Americans who either didn't buy radio shows or this one in particular but the sad part is so many did.

I expect the same reaction would occur today. Some might even react to "The Flying Saucer" - a comedy record by Buchanan & Goodman in 1956. Some things never change.
 
landtuna said:
My parents are included in the Greatest Generation.
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As are mine, although my father was fortunate to have spent the war at Fort McClellan in Alabama, lettering signs and illustrating training manuals, his unit never getting the call to battle. But there was no war on in 1938 and I'm sure some people who would later fight for their country fell for the Welles tale that October night. That didn't make them idiots.
 
Before you pass judgment on the intelligence of people in the 30s, you should look at your own. And do some homework.

1. People who "panicked" - and there weren't that many - had not been listening to show.
2. The panic was limited to densely populated urban neighborhoods in the Northeast.
3. Some people listening to the popular "Chase and Sanborn Hour" with Edgar Bergen and Charlie MacCarthy on NBC (Red) tuned out when they brought a guest opera singer on and started dial "surfing."
4. Those people hit the Mercury Theater just about the time the aliens were coming out of their ships and couldn't understand what the BLEEP was going on. They did not wait around for an announcement at the station break.
5. Those people went outside and started asking neighbors what was up. As demonstrated in "the telephone game" stories people repeated got wilder with each repetition.
6. Those people who heard rumors freaked.
7. This was a time of great tension. People had been through nine years of depression and a second world war was heating up in Europe with Germany invading it neighbors. It was not unreasonable to hear something out of context and think something terrible was happening.

Other factors. Not only did the show have a small audience, many affiliates did not take it. Many cities did not hear the show. Under network option time rules, affiliates could put a sponsored local show on instead. And panic only occurred in urban enclaves where people could and did talk to their neighbors. Orson Welles' voice was very well known. He was a regular and frequent radio actor, including starring as "The Shadow."

People who actually listened to the show knew what they were hearing.
 
CTListener said:
As are mine, although my father was fortunate to have spent the war at Fort McClellan in Alabama, lettering signs and illustrating training manuals, his unit never getting the call to battle. But there was no war on in 1938 and I'm sure some people who would later fight for their country fell for the Welles tale that October night. That didn't make them idiots.
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Actually there were several "wars" underway in 1938. The Japanese had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. Both were still underway. The invasion of China was the event that would result in the US embargo of war materiel to Japan and indirectly cause the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Belief that far away celestial beings could journey to Earth parallels that of religious 'faith' that has virtually nothing on which to base it.
 
Oscar Madison said:
Before you pass judgment on the intelligence of people in the 30s, you should look at your own. And do some homework.
7. This was a time of great tension. People had been through nine years of depression and a second world war was heating up in Europe with Germany invading it neighbors. It was not unreasonable to hear something out of context and think something terrible was happening.
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Germany did not invade Poland until September 1939.
 
Oscar Madison said:
Oh, no! Is that myth still alive? Radio people love it and are addicted to repeating this patently false story. I guess it makes radio types feel important, powerful and influential and reinforces their view that the audience is gullible and easily (mis)led. Orson Welles built his career on this fable, so it's not surprising that he liked it.
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A repeat of the broadcast, in Spanish, was done in Latin America (remembering that CBS and NBC/Blue/Red had both shortwave and acetate-based distribution to Latin America at the time).

A Spanish language script of the original, little-heard, shortwave broadcast survived. It was performed locally about a decade later on Radio Quito in Ecuador with these results:

"The year was 1949, the date February 12th and the place Quito, the Ecuadorian capital city and home at the time to some 250,000 people. It should have been just another routine dramatic broadcast by the city's principle radio station, but by the end of that evening, the local newspaper office (home to the radio station) would be a smouldering ruin and at least six people dead at the hands of an enraged mob. But just how did this horrific tragedy come about'"

More at http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_quito.htm

I knew some of the people involved, as the son of the owner of the station and the newspaper was a classmate of mine in high school and I was already involved in radio. The story as reported is fairly accurate, and the burning of the newspaper building and the station is well documented. The part about prior reports about aliens being seeded in the paper was denied by my friend's father, who was the owner and publisher of the paper, who also said that the reports of the show not being announced as a dramatization were untrue.

And, considering that NBC operated two separate radio networks Red and Blue in 1938, when comparing ratings with CBS one has to look at all three webs individually; CBS does quite well in that comparison. And Mutual, a loose cooperative of independent stations, was a rather distant fourth.

Looking at NBC, we have to remember that just a few years later it would be deemed a monopoly and ordered to divest one of the webs, which became ABC Radio.

By 1935, in fact, CBS had more affiliates than either NBC web individually.

The drama was also run at WKAQ in San Juan, with resulting damage to the station facilities and the El Mundo newspaper plant. I heard this story narrated by the station owner as a feature during a Puerto Rico Broadcaster's Association meeting in the late 60's as part of a session about "Responsibility and Ethics".
 
landtuna said:
Germany did not invade Poland until September 1939.
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But they invaded Austria in March, 1938, 6 months prior to the War of the Worlds broadcast. Tensions were running high because of the German occupation, by international accord, of Sudetenland, the German speaking area of Czechoslovakia... and event that occurred just a month prior to the broadcast.
 
landtuna said:
Germany did not invade Poland until September 1939.
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Pay attention there will be quiz: Germany invaded the Sudetenland, October 1st, 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler in Munich to try to make a peace deal. The US networks gave the Czech crisis extensive coverage and CBS launched the "World News Round-up." The Sino-Japanese War and the Spanish Civil War were well underway. People were very afraid of another war.
 
CTListener said:
Now THERE were the idiots! Listening to a ventriloquist act on radio!
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Apparently you never heard Bergen and McCarthy so it's idiotic to call people who enjoyed the show "idiots." Maybe CKWW should run the Chase and Sanborn show heard that evening. Bergen wasn't a very good ventriloquist and so didn't really make it on television (although his daughter did). But Bergen - McCarthy was/were funny. And the show attracted most of the biggest names in show business. W.C. Fields was a regular for a time. Don Ameche was the announcer for several seasons. Mae West was banned from radio after a risque (for the time) exchange with Charlie. Most of the top singers also appeared. And it was not uncommon for radio actors to play multiple characters on a show and to have interactions with "themselves."

The War of the Worlds does not hold up well. The alien landing is only a brief segment. Most of the show is an extended monologue by Welles. Bergen and McCarthy are still funny.
 
DavidEduardo said:


But they invaded Austria in March, 1938, 6 months prior to the War of the Worlds broadcast..
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Some invasion! They were met by cheering crowds, girls throwing flowers and Nazi salutes. Most Austrians -- like Hitler himself -- were ethnic Germans and ecstatic to be "real" German Germans again.
 
CTListener said:
Some invasion! They were met by cheering crowds, girls throwing flowers and Nazi salutes. Most Austrians -- like Hitler himself -- were ethnic Germans and ecstatic to be "real" German Germans again.
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You miss the point. Not all Austrians were happy. And this - along with all the other instances of German aggression - created a lot of fear and concern in the US. People in the US had not gotten over the war with German that ended 19 years earlier and did not want another one. It was a tense time in the US.
 
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