The program discussed the reasons, the circumstances, that allowed for a simple radio play to traumatize so many people.
To summarize some of the things said:
- radio in the 1930's was the dominant form of "home entertainment" in the U.S. One of the show's commentators said that radio at that time was what provided a nation of immigrants its identity as America. So radio had a captive and national audience.
- most of the sci-fi stories of that era were of the crude and cartoonish Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon variety, but Orson Welles intuitively understood sci-fi's dramatic potential. He realized that the persuasive power of radio when combined with the outlandish nature of a tall sci-fi tale could yield explosive results. He just didn't realize how explosive!
- the way Welles adapted War of the Worlds for radio was a stroke of brilliance, updating the setting to fit contemporary America. The play was disguised as a series of realistic sounding and unnerving news reports of some strange object crashing into a farm in Grover Mills, New Jersey...
As portions of the radio broadcast were played back, I have to say even I was a little spellbound by it! Especially by the voice of the fake news reporter who was describing for his listeners the sight of something sinister emerging from the crashed object. Add in the indistinct sounds of hissing and metal scraping, then unearthly shrieks and screams of panic from fleeing bystanders...and wow, I can understand how radio listeners everywhere were mesmerized. Your imagination fills in the blanks.
Perhaps the crowning touch for Welles was in hiring an actor who did a great impression of Franklin Roosevelt. He didn't portray FDR in the broadcast, just a "Secretary of the Interior" who suspiciously sounded like FDR. But the actor's performance was more than convincing. The real President Roosevelt was a fixture on the radio, after all; he frequently used radio to reach the country in a way that no other President before him ever had before, so just hearing someone that sounded like him warning the nation of the "gravity of the situation" was enough to convince listeners of the utter reality of a Martian invasion.
Host Cameron and the show's commentators believe that the Welles broadcast still holds relevance today as an example (and a warning) of how easily a master manipulator may use the media to dupe an unquestioning audience. As one person on the show said: "Give someone of the caliber of Orson Welles 10 minutes on CNN and he might fool the country into believing there's been an atomic attack."
Who knows? Maybe it could even be worse today, especially when you consider the rapid speed that rumours and false information can spread across the internet.
Here are some interesting links for "further reading":
The War of the Worlds -The Script -- the complete radio script as performed by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre
War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast Causes Panic -- a good summary of the event and the key players
War of the Worlds: How Orson Welles Drew the Nation into a Shared Illusion -- nice little article about the power of mass communications to create convincing illusions
The War of the Worlds in RealAudio -- you can supposedly listen to the original broadcast, but I don't use RealAudio so I haven't checked it out. I leave it up to you.
* 
