SPANIARDS FEAR NEW 'WAR OF THE WORLDS'

September 9, 1996
Source: USA Today
MADRID, Spain - Hundreds of panicked Spaniards flooded TV and radio switchboards with calls this weekend when a newscaster broke in with a report showing space aliens hovering over New York.

The purported news flashes that appeared Saturday and Sunday on the Telecinco network were in fact advertisements for the film Independence Day, which opens in Spain on Friday.

The PubliEspana advertising firm figured viewers wouldn't be taken in by the spoof of Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds - the 1938 radio play that created a short but memorable panic in the United States.

"We wanted to do something different, cause some excitement, but certainly not fear," an advertising executive, Jose Luis Andarias, said Monday.

But plenty of Spaniards believed the film's scenes of a White House press conference about the invasion, and an announcer breaking away to shots of New Yorkers fleeing in the streets.

A text warning on the bottom of the TV screen said "advertisement," but "apparently people can't watch footage, listen and read at the same time," Andarias said.

By The Associated Press

-end-

Back to UFO news update menu

All rights reserved to WUFOC and NÄRKONTAKT. If you reprint or quote any part of the content, you must give credit to: WUFOC, the free UFO-alternative on the Internet, http://www.tripnet.se/home/west/ufocentr.htm