Radio: Martians & Wild Animals

In Quito, Ecuador, one night last week, a radio station sowed a dangerous wind, and reaped a deadly whirlwind. Station HCQRX broadcast its own Ecuadorian version of the Orson Welles invasion-from-Mars program of 1938. Based on H. G. Wells’s fantasy, The War of the Worlds, the program whipped along from newsflash to fake newsflash with Ecuadorian place names dubbed in. At first Quiteños reacted as thousands of U.S. radio listeners did ten years ago.

Rushing from their homes, they poured into the city’s hilly streets in half-dressed hysteria. The station began to plead that it was only a hobgoblin story. But Quiteños took the explanation with none of the shamefaced amusement that U.S. citizens showed when they were hoaxed by Wonder-boy Welles. When they learned the facts, they stormed the radio station. They mobbed the three-story El Comercio building that housed the station, finally set it afire. Fifteen people trapped inside died in the fire before police and soldiers (some of them had rushed off to suburban Cotocallao to repel the “Martians”) were able to blast a tear-gas passage for fire engines.

In Willmar, Minn. (pop. 8,000), a bored announcer proved that the U.S., too, still takes its radio broadcasts seriously. One day last week Announcer Maurice Chargo of Willmar’s little station KWLM broadcast a fake news bulletin that a carload of wild animals had broken loose on the town. Frantic parents rushed into streets and playgrounds to snatch up their children; a man armed with rifles hurried to police headquarters; citizens bolted their doors. “I just ran out of jokes,” explained Chargo. “I got to thinking that maybe nobody listens to me.”