[78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too) [FWD]

[Ken "Silver Showcase"]

Rodger Holtin wrote:
> Some were truly panicked.  My dad's family was happily enjoying Nelson Eddy when the old man in their upstairs apartment came downstairs in tears blubbering about the end of thw world.

Re: later comments that Nelson Eddy didn't appear on the C&S program 
until later in the hour  -- if the old man man upstairs really was this 
upset he may very well have missed the station break that would have let 
him know it was just a radio drama.  Perhaps he was phoning 
friends/relatives about it before he came downstairs in tears.

My mother, who would have been 31 years old at the time, told me how she 
was telephoned by a friend about it, turned on the radio and believed it 
was real until her father came over to her house a few minutes later and 
told her it was just a play.

As so the claim that no FCC rules were changed because of WOTW, when I 
was worked at a local radio station, (1978-2004), we had to do a station 
break at the top and bottom of the hour, and I was told that the bottom 
hour requirement came about because of the WOTW 1938 broadcast.  But I 
never verified that claim.  Anyone know for certain?

I do agree that the "panic" has probably been very much fictionalized.  
The broadcast is certainly a cultural landmark, and I have no doubt that 
some people overreacted - gullibility is never is short supply, - but as 
has been pointed out here, the Mercury Theatre was not the hot show of 
the day and so relatively few people would have been tuned in.

-- Ken R.