War of the World: The Panic Broadcast

The 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells was a Halloween episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, directed and narrated by Orson Welles. The episode was broadcast live over the CBS Radio Network. It was an adaptation of Wells’ novel and is infamous for inciting a panic by convincing some listeners that a Martian invasion was actually taking place. The first half of the program was delivered in a realistic “breaking news” format, which caused confusion and fear among the audience.