hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to war of the worlds the radio broadcast and audiences this video is going to be particularly relevant for you if you are studying a level aqa media studies as it is currently on that specification radio was an important new growing media platform at the time previously people had got all their information really from newspapers and now there was this new media platform that had come into being you know sort of in the last 10 15 years and people were starting to see how this could be really beneficial lots of families would sit around their radios in the daytime and in the evenings in particular and they would listen together both for news and for entertainment so this was part of the mercury theater on the air segment on cbc so it's a good way of targeting audiences who perhaps were interested in kind of fictional radio theater or radio drama war of the worlds was directed and narrated by orson welles and although he was very young um you know he'd clearly made several other media products that had gathered a lot of um success and praise from audiences and critics orson welles being the kind of narrator as well people were familiar with his voice and and that would have helped to engage audiences the writer howard koch again had had some really good successes so you know around the world in 80 days hell on ice and he'd had particularly success with sci-fi products it was also based on an existing book and basing your product on something that already exists mean that it has an existing fan base a pre-sold audience of people who may listen because they're aware of the book and that helps to reduce risk even further so the program itself was designed like a typical radio broadcast there was some music and there were you know people talking and the idea was that these little mini news broadcasts fictional news broadcasts were kind of cut into this program as though they were interrupting a program of music to talk about this news that was supposedly happening so the actual way the program was designed and edited was designed to make it feel very realistic to the audience you know it's hard to tell whether they were deliberately trying to scare audiences but certainly to try and make this feel kind of gritty and realistic so the audiences were a little bit on the edge of their seats listening at home and there's a lot of ways in which they tried to do this the reporter who was kind of on the scene supposedly with the aliens landing you know he had a very panicked voice which made that feel quite um shocking and scary to an audience they mentioned real locations within the broadcast as well so they mentioned things like new york city and they talk about particular areas where aliens have landed and attacked and so the mentioning of real locations would have engaged audiences as well there is quite an ominous moment where the radio actually falls silent as though you know somebody has been killed and you have one lone kind of radio operator saying is there anyone there and there's no response um and that really makes it feel quite scary and ominous to an audience you know appealing you know appealing to those fans of kind of horror and sci-fi if they knew that it was a fictional product but also kind of creating that feeling of fear in an audience who might have been convinced it was real they also deliberately chose not to have any ad breaks in the first half and that added to that feeling of reality for an audience it encouraged them to suspend their disbelief and to really to um immerse themselves in the program the reactions of audiences have been kind of well written about over the years and they're really varied in terms of what you read and where as to how intensely audiences seem to have reacted at the time so you will find different records and research that show different things there were several reports the audiences really panicked they really thought this was real and the audiences took to the streets and started you know very much being worried that the you know the country really had been invaded by aliens there actually was a huge number of telephone calls made to um sort of the local police 2 000 phone calls in two hours um so a lot of police were called um and that does suggest that there were audiences who were incredibly worried about this show at the time there was an unfortunate coincidence that there was a power cut at the same time and that meant that there was a kind of blackout shortly after the radio broadcast and that meant that a lot of people couldn't call um and they couldn't check and what was going on and whether it was weird or not and that potentially may have increased the numbers of audiences who may have felt very scared by this the following few days uh resulted in 12 500 newspaper articles about this radio broadcast in various newspapers and other publications so there was clearly a very big reaction from audiences whether it was positive or negative in fact even adolf hitler spoke about this radio broadcast some claims seem to have been exaggerated over time so you will find some websites and newspaper articles that suggest that people had heart heart attacks people died that there were people who committed suicide that there was a massive number of rise in hospital admissions as a result um so um i think you know it's important to consider that those things might have happened although some people do believe that those may be exaggerated claims i think it's important to understand why people may have reacted that way apart from the fact that this program is very much designed to feel real the historical context of when this was made makes this incredibly important if you think about the fact that this was just before the start of the second world war things were very much tied up in conflict and there was a lot of tension from different countries at the time lots of people were fearing invasion and fearing war people were worried that germany was about to invade europe there was the munich crisis so there were lots of historical political events that were happening that meant that a lot of audiences were on edge anyway and in particular were on edge about the idea of any kind of invasion or attack some audiences completely misinterpreted the drama and instead of aliens invading they were convinced it was germans invading so audiences do not always take the preferred reading of a media product there was a kind of warning at the introduction of the show so when it was first broadcast some you know they kind of introduced it as a piece of theatre but you know a lot of audiences missed that introduction they you know they tuned in a few minutes late they didn't hear it and there really wasn't enough to tell people at the time that this was fiction rather than fact you have to remember at the time there was no tv there was no social media people couldn't just go on the internet and check if this was true you know they didn't have anyone else to talk to apart from the police and if you couldn't get through to the police or if there was a power cart and you couldn't call anyone then a lot of people may have been literally and metaphorically kind of in the dark and not really knowing what was going on and that would have increased fear some audiences will have recognized that it was based on a book by h.g wells and of course those audiences would have realized it was fiction but perhaps if you were a less educated audience and you might not have read that book or you might not be familiar with it as a book then you might be more likely to accept and and believe that it was real of course modern audiences now when we listen back on it we're often quite used to seeing the media as a construct and being aware that things are often fictionalized and we're told they're fact even though they're not so a lot of modern audiences looking at this will will be able to see it more objectively and some modern audiences don't understand how people would have been fooled at the time so it's important to understand you know which audience is listening and and how and why they might have reacted to it actually a lot of people who complained about the broadcast hadn't actually listened to it themselves they just read about it in the newspaper or heard about it from friends um so it's interesting the way audiences sometimes react quite badly even though they've not actually seen or consumed that product themselves sometimes people are a little bit like sheep um it's that idea of the kind of two-step flow theory we listen to what other people stay and then we base our opinions on their opinions it's actually really hard to measure the effects of the media you know people have tried before people like bandura and his media effects theory um it's really hard to work out whether a radio show really did cause people to panic whether a radio show did cause anyone to die or to you know have a heart attack you know how do you ever prove that so it's very hard to measure the effects of this particular broadcast on the audience at the time it's highly likely as well that when newspapers reported on this and the terrible effects apparently of this show there's obviously a reason why newspapers might have exaggerated the effects of this broadcast and that is because radio were newspapers main competition so um when uh newspapers were reporting about how terrible this show was and how it really caused deaths and injuries and hospitalizations it was probably because newspapers had a bit of a biased interest in making radio look bad at the time and a lot of people argue that the reactions of the audience would not have been as bad if radio and newspapers hadn't been drumming up so much fear and moral panic and cultivating so much terror about war and conflict in the run-up to this broadcast so some people believe the audience's reactions were actually kind of um encouraged by both radio and newspapers so that was my easy to understand guide to the war of the worlds broadcast and audiences don't forget to check out my channel for other relevant videos and if you would like a video that i don't already have just leave a little comment below and i'll see what i can do