• War of the Worlds was a special edition episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air as a Halloween special.
• It was directed and narrated by Orson Welles  as an adaptation of  H. G Well’s novel, “The War of the Worlds” (1898)
• Broadcast live at 8pm on October 30th, 1938 through the CBS Radio Network (provides news  to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the U.S) 
•   The episode is famously known for inciting panic from the public by convincing some members of the audience that an alien invasion was happening.
• The program begins with a monologue resembling the introductory monologue in the original novel
• It then follows on to the usual radio show (music/speaking) where it is then periodically interrupted by news bulletins talking about explosions on mars.
• An on-scene reporter describes the crisis in a sense of panic before the feed goes dead.
• After a series of news updates the presenter goes into silence where a radio operator asks “Is there anyone on the air? Isn’t there… anyone?” with no response. The program takes its first break thirty minutes after Welles’s introduction.
• The broadcast ends with a brief “out of character” announcement by Welles in which he compares the show to “dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo!'”
  • In the days following, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program was described as “deceptive” by newspapers and opinion leaders.
  • This lead to an outcry against the broadcasters and implications for a regulatory assessment by the FCC.
  • Welles then apologized at a news conference the next morning, and no punitive action was taken.
  • The broadcast and subsequent publicity brought the 23-year-old Welles to the attention of the general public leaving him with the reputation of a storyteller and “trickster”
  • “I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening, and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.” – Welles
  • Welles took inspiration from Ronald Knox’s radio hoax “Broadcasting the Barricade” which was broadcast by the BBC in 1926
  • Actor Stefan Schnabel recalled sitting in the anteroom after finishing his on-air performance. “A few policemen trickled in, then a few more. Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show. It was a show to witness.”
    • Due to some listeners only hearing a portion of the broadcast and in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. 
    • Thousands shared the false reports with others or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real.
    • Many newspapers assumed that the large number of phone calls and the scattered reports of listeners rushing about or fleeing their homes proved the existence of a mass panic
    • The broadcast was even shown flashing in Times Square (New York)
    • Host Jack Paar of the Tonight Show received calls to the studio asking if the world was coming to an end. After Paar denied it listeners started to accuse him with “covering up the truth”
    • On November 2, 1938, the Australian newspaper The Age  characterized the incident as “mass hysteria” and stated that “never in the history of the United States had such a wave of terror and panic swept the continent”. Unnamed observers quoted by The Age commented that “the panic could have only happened in America”

Media Institutions

• Broadcast by Columbia Broadcasting Company – an institution still in existence (a television and radio network) today.
• Radio broadcasting was seen as competition to newspapers which had previously been the only way of receiving news.
• Radio broadcasting was regulated by the Federal Communications Commission
• They also investigated the broadcast to see if it had broken any laws.
• The broadcast provides an excellent example to consider the effect of individual producers on media industries (known as ‘auteur theory’) as this is the work of Orson Welles.
• Auteur theory is an artist with a distinctive approach whose control is so unbound but personal that they are likened to be the “author”.

Media Audiences

• Gerbner: Cultivation Theory – People who are more exposed to “living” in the television world, the more likely they are to believe that social reality aligns with the reality portrayed on television
• Exposure to media affects a viewer’s perceptions of reality, drawing attention to three aspects: institutions, messages, and publics – linking to mainstreaming and how viewers develop a common outlook.

Facts and Figures:

• The War of the Worlds was an episode of the radio series “The Mercury Theatre on the Air”, this was a radio series of live dramas which were created and hosted by Orson Welles in the United States and was originally released on July 11th to December 4th 1938.
• “The War of the Worlds” was specifically a Halloween radio episode which was performed and broadcasted live at 8pm until 9pm on October 30th 1938 and ran for 60 minutes (1 hour).
• “The War of the Worlds” episode instigated panic by convincing members of the public that specific events were taking place such as a Martian invasion although the episode only had few listeners so this did not become a global panic.
• According to Wikipedia, 6 million people heard the episode and caused 1.2 million to be frightened and disturbed. Although 30 minutes into the show before its first break, people still believed this.

• The episode was broadcasted over the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting company Radio Network. This radio network provided news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States and is owned by Paramount Global. CBS Radio was launched in 1927.

Theorists:

• George Gerbner: Created the Cultivation Theory and suggested that the theory’s key proposition is that “the more time people spend ‘living’ in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on television.” and this links to War of the Worlds as most of the audiences who listened to the radio drama episode believed the stories which were mentioned causing the watchers to become disturbed and uncomfortable. I feel the main section which may have started the belief of the live drama was when producers interrupted the music to announce an important message e.g alien invasion from Mars (First announcement at 3:38)
• Stuart Hall developed the Theory of encoding and decoding and created ‘The Encoding/decoding model of communication’ which is a theoretical approach of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted. In terms of War of the Worlds,
• Harold Lasswell: Created the One step-flow of Hypothermic Needle theory which suggests that media explores information in such a way that it injects in the mind of audiences as bullets which causes different reactions to the media messages.

• Hybrid Radio form
• War of the Worlds was a novel published in 1989 by H.G Wells. In 1938, it was adapted into a radio drama directed and narrated by Orson Welles for CBS Radio Network (Columbia Broadcasting Company)
• 1930’s/40’s = The ‘Golden Age’ of Radio
• The ‘War of the Worlds’ episode was the 17th episode in the ‘The Mercury Theatre on the Air’ series in which Orson Welles transformed a series of classic literature into radio dramas.

Evidence

• Interruption in broadcast (39.30 mins) – News goes silent
• “We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s”

Institution

CBS Radio Network:

• ‘CBS Radio Network’ is owned by ‘Paramount Global’ (a “multinational mass media conglomerate”) through horizontal integration.
• ‘Paramount Global’ was formed in 2019 as a product of the merging between CBS Cooperation and Viacom.

Audience

“Radio listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact”

Regulation

• In the 1930’s, Radio was regulated by the Federal Communications Commission

War of the Worlds is a drama, and it uses the codes and conventions of a news broadcast in order to make a made up explosion and invasion of aliens seem like a real world issue and crisis.

Media Institutions

War of the Worlds was broadcast by Columbia Broadcasting Company – an institution still in existence

At the time, radio and broadcasting was seen as direct competition to newspapers.

The broadcast heavily shows that institutions are always looking for new styles of products to make to attract new audiences.

Regulation – radio broadcasting was regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and it investigated the broadcast to see if it had broken any laws.

The broadcast shows the effect of individual producers on media industries (known as ‘auteur theory’) 

Media Audiences

Stuart Hall – Preferred reading – Dominant reading would be to acknowledge the broadcast as not real and a work of fiction, while other people took it very seriously and it greatly affected their lives.

Cultivation theory – Gerbner stated that if enough content is produced with a certain agenda is produced, people will accept it as reality – Radio was growing so much in the 1930s, and so people were unclear whether radio itself could ever consist of lies.

CBS likely exaggerated impact of War of the Worlds for marketing and publicity purposes – people didn’t actually kill themselves and believe martians were invading – according to Jean Baudrillard’s theories around postmodernism. He states that “people lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

CE Hooper rating survey conducted 12 hours after the program went live found 98% of the people at the time weren’t listening. Of the 2%, no one took it as a legitimate news broadcast.

This shows that the dominant reading as depicted by Hall’s theory of preferred reading is that people treated it as fake.

Industries

Newsbeat is a BBC News product with bulletins which are broadcast on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1 Xtra and BBC Asian Network. Newsbeat- radio service from the BBC

The main focus is news towards teenagers and “twentysomethings”.

Funded by the tax from the government, hypothecated tax, money from a specific tax goes towards the BBC for education.

Launched on the 10th September 1973

What could be asked?

How do media companies use industrial strategies to target specific audiences?

Newsbeat has Twitter, YouTube and other social media accounts and features on the BBC’s website, reaching over 9 million people a week. This would not be possible without the addition of social media platforms, which demonstrates the strategies used by the BBC in order to mitigate risk – Hesmondhalgh.

Reporters on NewsBeat have been told to address listeners as if they were “talking to a friend” as described by the editor, Danielle Dwyer. This adds a friendly feel to the programme which helps to appeal to the younger audience which it is made for. They have also been told to steer clear of long, complicated words which allows for listeners to not have to pay as much attention when listening and also easy for younger people to digest and decode – Hall’s reception theory.

What could I argue?

I want to argue that the BBC uses many different industrial strategies in order to reduce the risks of the media industries and increase the appeal of their products.