Radio Drama
In the 1920s, stories took to the airwaves. Before television, the habit of many people taking in the same story at the same hour had already begun.
The most famous incident in this band is Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds, on 30 October 1938. The way it is usually told, though, needs correcting (see the myth note).
In Japan, the NHK radio drama Kimi no Na wa ran for two years from 1952, ninety-eight episodes in all. There is a saying that the women's side of the public baths emptied out when it went on the air. But this too is not a counted record. Already in the literature of the 1950s there are several claims that the story came out of a film company's publicity, and the claims disagree with each other about who started it. That it was hugely popular is certain, and the stole the heroine wore is still remembered as a fashion, the Machiko-maki. This map will not write more than that it was talked about that way.
The myth, corrected
The 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds sent the whole of America into a panic
The broadcast is real (30 October 1938, CBS). But when researchers went back to the audience measurement for that hour, 2 per cent of those listening named a radio play or the Orson Welles programme. The well-known 1940 study estimating that a million people were frightened has been criticised for resting on a figure more than 100 per cent higher than any other known measure. Follow-up work found no support for the stories of people treated in hospital for shock, and not one newspaper report of a suicide connected to the broadcast has been found. So why did the story spread? Researchers point to the newspapers of the day having a motive: discrediting radio as a source of news and winning back advertising. It cannot be said that there was no alarm at all, but the current assessment is that it was too small to measure.