By David Hinckley
Daily News Staff Writer

28 June 2005

If anything could be scarier than Tom Cruise's just-ended promotional
tour for his flick "War of the Worlds," which opens tomorrow, it might
be the original "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast on Halloween night
1938.

Tomorrow afternoon at 3, then, WNYC (93.9 FM) will run a Radio Lab
special called "Look Out ... Martians!," which will recount the story
of that first broadcast and look at subsequent re-creations that have
had tragic consequences.

Orson Welles' original production had fictitious radio news announcers
breaking into a music program to say Martian invaders had landed in
Grovers Mill, N.J. By show's end, the Martians had decimated New York
and, according to legend, a million Americans mistook the show for
legitimate news and panicked accordingly.

There are conflicting reports about the exact extent of this panic.
But the WNYC special, which features excerpts from the Welles
broadcast, notes that knockoff programs led to a military mobilization
in Chile and the torching of a radio station in Ecuador.

Hosting on WNYC is Jad Abumrad.

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