The broadcast went out on October 30, 1938, on the CBS network, as the Mercury Theatre on the Air retold the old novel in the form of breaking news. Welles played the part of the professor, and the show cut from dance music to frantic reports of cylinders falling in New Jersey. The trick was the format.
The fear was real for some. People who missed the opening cue that it was fiction rang relatives, fled their homes, and jammed the roads in a few towns, and the next day's papers ran the panic as front-page news, while the size of the scare was debated but the story stuck in the public mind. The press loved it. The show ran at eight in the evening on the East Coast, and many who tuned in late had just left a rival comedy program, so they caught only the fake bulletins and missed the opening note that it was a play.
The cause was craft. Welles built the show to feel like a real bulletin, with named towns and quiet voices, and he later said he meant to stir the audience, not to fool a continent. The fuss made him famous at twenty-three. The fame arrived.
The night changed radio. Networks added clearer warnings that a play was a play, and the event became the textbook case of mass panic and the power of the mic. Welles went on to make Citizen Kane. The broadcast still scares students. The hoax became history.