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Landmark Work

The War of the Worlds Broadcast

Radio Drama and Broadcast Landmarks

Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel, broadcast by CBS on 30 October 1938, staged partly as a series of breaking news bulletins reporting a Martian landing in New Jersey. Newspaper accounts of mass panic were greatly exaggerated, a point modern scholarship stresses, but the broadcast became the standing exhibit for the power of the medium and the question of listener trust.

Facts
Release Year
1938 1
Country
United States 1
Connections

Created By

Orson Welles, Figures

Directed and narrated by Welles for the Mercury Theatre on the Air; Howard Koch wrote the script.

Source Encyclopedia Britannica

In Medium

Radio, Media Forms
Source Encyclopedia Britannica
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source
Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationThe War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), Introduction section
Quote, The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), Introduction section
"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air which was broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938 over the CBS Radio Network.
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