Tremendous jets of blue flames shooting out into space
I wonder if anyone’s got a radio that’s operating
The top of the 11PM hour brought news of the United States’ decision to halt bombing in North Vietnam. Following cautiously optimistic words from VP Hubert Humphrey, the broadcast pulled a snippet from the President’s remarks. Johnson’s words were decidedly more cautious than optimistic.
“There may well be very hard fighting ahead,” the President warned in a stern Texas twang. “Certainly, there is going to be some very hard negotiating, because many difficult and critically important issues are still facing these negotiators.”
The next few stories arrived in quick succession, all focused on local concerns. The Buffalo police thwarted an attempted jewelry store heist and discovered a small-time gambling ring, while failing to nab a masked bandit who fled a gas station with $96. For the final story, reporter Joe Downey turned his attention to Southern California’s Palomar Observatory, where scientists had made a shocking discovery.
“For the past two nights, astronomers have been watching a series of huge explosions that have been taking place on the surface of the planet Mars,” Downey explained at a rapid, dispassionate clip. “The observatory’s director, Dr. Benjamin Spencer, says that, although they appear to have as much energy as hydrogen bomb blasts, they are undoubtedly of natural origin. Dr. Spencer described the explosions as looking like, ‘tremendous jets of blue flames shooting out into space.’ ”
The scientists, Downey added, were concerned out the amount of gas shooting out into space, but didn’t anticipate that the extraterrestrial explosions would have any effect on Earth. Reaction to the news was swift. D.J. Sandy Beach pled with listeners not to call into the news department. Reporters were in contact with the observatory, he explained, before dropping a needle on “Hey Jude,” which had only just ended a record-setting nine-week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 a few days prior.
As it wound down, McCartney’s seven-minute piano epic was interrupted by a WKBW news bulletin. A meteor had just smashed into a roadway Northeast of Buffalo in Grand Island, New York. Several people were dead. Over the course of the next hour, the station’s reporters were on-site, as the initial news gave way to a full-scale alien invasion. Reporter Irv Weinstein was seemingly vaporized, mid-sentence.
“He’s dead,” producer Jefferson Kaye said with a morose chuckle. “I wonder if anybody’s listening. I wonder if anyone’s got a radio that’s operating.” A high-pitched sound overtook the broadcast. Kaye described his final moments, sobbing as he was asphyxiated by poison gas.
Broadcaster Danny Neaverth would have the final word, however. Exactly 30 years prior, he explained, Orson Welles had orchestrated a similar broadcast. His had ended darkly, but ultimately struck a hopeful note as the Martian invaders were felled by the common cold.
The two broadcasts were intentionally similar, with WKBW’s version localizing the invasion and updating its technologies for the late-60s audience. The station had even said as much in the opening the of the broadcast – and, for that matter, hourly notes in the three weeks leading up to the event.
“What you are listening to is a dramatization of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds on WKBW radio, 1520 on your Buffalo dial,” Neaverth said in its final moments. “I repeat, it is a dramatization; it is a play. It is not happening in any way, shape or form.”
It was too late. The station’s switchboards were jammed by hundreds of calls from panicked listeners. The following day, the Associated Press recounted stories of panicked university students calling home to assess the damage, while news offices around the Northeast fielded calls from confused citizens.
Effectively a reboot of the 1938 Mercury Radio broadcast, WKBW managed to unintentionally recapture some of the panic of the original, no doubt owing to the inclusion of the station’s real reporters who were entirely invested in selling the product. While the program hadn’t sparked the level of national notoriety of the Welles version, Kaye and the show’s director, Dan Kriegler, believed they would soon be fired, with the former even going so far as submitting his resignation.
Their jobs were safe, Pete Newell noted in a staff letter. The General Manager added that if such real world events were to ever transpire, “I hope we report it half as well.”
Sources:
WKBW's 1968 War of the Worlds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzEGD1ESr8
The Martians Are Coming! https://buffalonews.com/opinion/columnists/the-martians-are-coming-and-another-tv-scare-on-the-horizon/article_560ef570-6ddd-5df4-814a-fcdc4b666b2c.html
‘War of the Worlds’ Still Sparks Calls https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3096272/war-of-the-worlds-in-buffalo-ny-1968/