WCC COMM 101-Chapter #7 Focus (War of the Worlds)

1. CHAPTER 7
Radio, Recording, and Popular Music
Chapter/Study Focus:
WAR OF THE WORLDS

2. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
 BACKSTORY
- Based on the 1898 book
by H.G. Wells
- Mercury Radio Theater
Company dramatized it on
CBS Radio 10/30/1938
- Directed and narrated by
Orson Welles who quickly
rocketed to fame after it
aired.

3. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
 Historical Context:
In 1938, the lead-up to WWII
was being broadcast from
Europe – listeners heard
very real reports of
invasion just weeks earlier
Mars was a popular topic of
speculation and fear –
remember, even a trip to
moon was decades away

4. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
 Media Context:
Radio was a new medium
with few stations/networks,
1938 was pre-television,
no Internet, relatively few
phones, people could not
rely on countless other
media channels for
information as we can now
The timing of the broadcast
was also crucial to its
effect

5. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
 Psychological Context:
People were more likely to
believe what the
media/radio told them –
they weren’t used to being
“Punk’d” or deceived yet
Primed by war reports,
people were more apt to
believe it was now
happening to them

6. ON THE AIR – 10/30/1938
 Actual 1938 Radio Broadcast
 Approach this from the
perspective of an actual listener
in 1938 (subjectively).
 And approach this with the
perspective of a 2017 media
student (objectively).
 THEN ASK YOURSELF:
WHAT WORKED?
WHAT DIDN’T WORK?

7. WHAT WORKED?
 No commercials (unsponsored)
 Updated fiction presented as LIVE radio
 NO extra “dramatic” music
 The sudden silences
 The apparent “mistakes”: “Am I on?” and
“Speak louder, please.”
 Using a man who sounded like the
president, FDR (but wasn’t identified as
such)

8. WHAT WORKED?
 Tuning in at just the right time
 The repeated use of the “Breaking News”
motif
 Encouraging the audience to lean in and
“listen please”
 Using the radio itself as part of the story -
Using the radio as part of the story: first witness was
“listening to the radio” when he heard the falling objects;
turning the radio over to the government because “radio
has a responsibility to serve the public…

9. WHAT DIDN’T WORK?
 Ridiculous timeline
 Lack of coverage on other radio stations
 The cut-back to the studio after the first
attack
 You had to tune in and tune out at just the
right moments for it to successfully freak
you out
 The narrative jump ahead in time after the
“attack”

10. THE AFTERMATH
 A look back
 The Untold Story

11. THE AFTERMATH
 Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others
thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in
the distance.
 It’s been calculated that out of the six million who heard the CBS
broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were
'genuinely frightened’”. While Welles and company were heard by a
comparatively small audience (in the same period, NBC's audience was
an estimated 30 million), the uproar was anything but minute: within a
month, there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its
impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic as "evidence of the decadence
and corrupt condition of democracy."
 Later studies suggested this "panic" was less widespread than
newspapers suggested. During this period, many newspapers were
concerned that radio, a new medium, would make them defunct. In
addition, this was a time of yellow journalism, where newspapers were not
held to the same standards as today. As a result, journalists took this
opportunity to demonstrate the dangers of broadcast by embellishing the
story, and the panic that ensued, greatly.

12.  MODERN
EXAMPLES:
 Balloon Boy
 CNN Porn
 Michael Jackson
Alive?
IS IT REAL?

13.  “We wanted to show how easily
users can be manipulated on
the Internet with hoax videos,”
RTL spokeswoman Heike
Schultz told The Associated
Press. “Therefore, we created
this video of Michael Jackson
being alive, even though
everybody knows by now that
he is dead — and the response
was breathtaking.”
IS IT REAL?

14. • EPIC TWERK FAIL
• OTHER MEDIA HOAXES
• ARTIST JOEY SKAGGS
IS IT REAL?

15. CZECH TELEVISION EXAMPLE
 June 17, 2007
- Viewers of a National Weather Channel morning
broadcast featuring panoramic shots of mountains
with relaxing muzak saw this:

16. ZTOHOVEN STATEMENT
 Partial statement made by art group ZTOHOVEN:
“On the 17th of June 2007 this group attacked
the space of TV broadcasting. It distorted it,
questioned its truthfulness and its credibility. It
drew attention to the possibility of using images
of the world created by the media in place of the
existing, real world. Is everything we see daily
on our TV screens real? Is everything presented
to us by the media, newspapers, television,
Internet actually real? This is the concept our
project would like to introduce and remind of.”

17. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
But a WAR OF THE
WORLDS hoax itself
could never happen
again, right? After all, it’s
been so publicized and
discussed…

18. OVERVIEW
 Main Points
- Context is crucial in
understanding media
- Even “fake” media
manipulates and affects
society in real ways
- A WOTW-like media
event can happen again
and, in fact, happens in
small ways all the time

19. OTHER VERSIONS
 Several films, TV
Series, other Radio
Productions,
computer games,
comic books, and
even a musical
adaptation in the
form of a concept
album.