Latest / The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa
#112 The First Radio Hoax: Broadcasting the Barricades - A Centenary Re-enactment
100 years ago from this podcast's release, the BBC broadcast the first known radio scare - 12 years before Orson Welles's famous War of the Worlds, and possibly inspiring it.
It was hoax - although arguably it's only a hoax if the hoaxer intends to fool the hoaxee... and Father Ronald Knox seemingly thought he was just providing some entertainment in his radio pastiche: Broadcasting the Barricades.
But when it's a spoof news report about the House of Commons being destroyed with trench mortars, the felling of Big Ben, the destruction of the Savoy Hotel and reports of a mob hanging or roasting…
The skinny
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