industry

• newspapers was always the main source of news and entertainment so far in the home, but radio was the newspaper industry's main competitor
• a lot of audiences turned to radio away from newspapers as they believed radio would give them more up to date news about world affairs including wars and potential attacks
• The War of the Worlds was on the Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBC), a commercial radio station, which meant they relied on getting large numbers of listeners
• Mercury Theatre On The Air segment helped to target listeners interested in Mercury's successful theatre based dramas
• The writer Howard Koch had previously seen success with Sci-Fi products and adapting them into radio dramas
• the station made several announcements that evening to attempt to remind listeners that the segment had been a radio play and not real- an attempt of self-regulation
• the show was broadcast on Oct 30th 1938, halloween eve, Orson Welles came onto the radio shortly after the War of the Worlds had been broadcast and said that he considered this to be a halloween special, which shows us why it has been designed to seem horrific and terrifying,
• The FCC, the regulatory body for radio in the USA, received a number of complaints by listeners
• The FCC did ban radio stations from broadcasting fake alarms about wars and invasions
• CBS was quietly pleased about all the publicity surrounding the show with many cast and crew actually hyping up the chaos it caused