War of the Worlds

We have all survived another fortnight of comedy posing as news. The best, one might say, was saved for last: today's "emergency test alert."

Someone must have done much costly homework to determine what is obvious to almost anyone familiar with broadcast and cable media. If you want to test an emergency test alert, the best time to do it is Wednesday at 2 p.m. Today, there are almost certainly more viewers at 2 a.m. on Wednesday.

It follows that the endless drumbeat of warnings was utterly necessary, because the viewing (or listening) audience on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. is about as clueless as audiences come. During my numerous periods of employment hiatus, I once occasionally turned to afternoon TV or radio for useful items like news or weather. One can find both on radio, but not TV. It's a miasma of soap operas, wannabe talk shows, and infomercials, especially those targeted at people over 80. It's hard to imagine an audience more vulnerable to panic. I haven't taken advantage of any media very much over the last few days, so if the social networks were as swamped with "only a test" messages, I may have missed it. And yet, as sources said in the link, it makes as much or more sense to push such tests out online.

One would think that some of the geriatric audience would remember the lesson of the original "War of the Worlds." One could reasonably expect that many of the denizens of social media have no idea that a thing ever happened. They can hardly doubt that it could happen. One might say the Mercury Radio Theatre went viral.