I remember in 1983, back when I was a college student, that it was a
huge TV event. ABC was to broadcast
The Day After, its highly-anticipated and politically controversial made-for-TV drama portraying the after-effects of a US-USSR nuclear war.
ABC responded to conservative opposition --including from the Reagan administration-- by cutting scenes, publishing viewer guides, set up an 800-number hotline, and broadcasting live debates immediately afterward featuring the likes of William F. Buckley.
The result was a record audience for a made-for-TV movie, nearly 100 million people...
I recall that as this movie was being developed, people on all sides were critical. The Reaganites were furious that the script did not clearly identify the Soviets as the ones who launched their missiles first (it was deliberatley left ambiguous), and they feared the film would cause a public backlash against their massive build-up of nuclear weapons and policies such as First Strike and MADD.
Nuclear weapons opponents worried that a made-for-TV film could never show the true scope and horror of nuclear war at a time when they were pushing for a halt to all nucear weapons production and attempting to raise public awareness of the risk of an accidental nuclear launch --such as nuclear winter.
Parents and psychologists fretted that people might repeat the kind of panic following the H.G. Wells 1939 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.
ABC took a number of actions in response that are interesting to consider in light of the 9/11 Schlockumentary:
1. Post-production cuts -- after the film was shot (in Kansas where it was set), editors removed scenes deemed too shocking or inappropriate, including one showing a child waking-up screaming from a nightmare about a nuclear attack, and another showing a women holding a diaphragm.
2. 800-Number Hotline -- an 800-number hotline was set-up to connect any freaked-out viewer to counseling.
3. Viewer Guides -- ABC published a half-million viewer guides to inform the public about the dangers of nuclear war and prepare them for any shock from the film.
4. Reagan Voice-Over Change -- In the original broadcast, the President's voice in the film was made to sound like Ronald Reagan, but it was substituted with a more generic voice in subsequent broadcasts and the distributed version.
There was a ton of promotion, study groups, and high school students were assigned the movie as homework, but I actually wasn't aware of most of the behind-the-scenes action at the time (I gleaned much of what's above from the more thorough Wikipedia entry). What I do remember quite vividly was the pre-broadcast fulminating of The Right, and two interesting post-broadcast events.
One was a post-broadcast discussion on ABC, hosted by Ted Koppel, I think as a special Nightline segment. The Wikipedia entry says that ABC broadcast a live debate about nuclear weapons policy between Carl Sagan and William F. Buckley, Jr., but I don't remember such a debate. I recall instead, that The Day After broadcast segued immediately into Nightline (they even advertised the discussion during one of the final commercial breaks with the live panel visible in the background).
The discussion panel included both Dr. Sagan and William Buckley, and also Brent Scowcroft, Robert MacNamera, and Elie Weisel; I can't recall for sure if there was anyone else.
But even before the panel started, they first gave then Secretary of State George Schultz an opportunity to give the Reagan administration spin. Asked for his reaction by Koppel, Schultz said something pretty close to, "The film makes the point that nuclear war is unacceptable, which is why we are pursuing our policy of nuclear deterrent with the Soviet Union."
The panel discussion was quite lively, and being that we were all 30 or so Cornell students watching on a TV, we were particularly proud of Sagan's eloquence. I also remember Henry Kissinger speaking, but am not sure if he was on the panel or interviewed via satellite. At one point he was on screen with those gobs of spittle in the corners of his mouth saying something like, "nuclear weapons are not what causes wars, what causes wars is power-hungry leaders and uncontrolled ambition... which triggered gales of laughter from the crowd.
The second thing I remember was that the right-wingers hassled ABC so much that the network agreed to produce and broadcast a TV mini-series called Amerika dramatizing what the USA would be like under Soviet occupation (the Wikipedia entry attributes this decision to an op-ed criticism of The Day After by Ben Stein). It made nowhere near the splash, and all I remember about it was a scene with Mariel Hemingway as a kind of Soviet S&M chick.
Yes, it's true that these kind of TV dramas can influence how the public interprets contemporaneous, real-world events, and ABC clearly has a long history with this.
I'd be interested to know if any other Koassacks remember watching the Day After or the Nightline panel. I also wonder if ABC will offer similar panel discussions abuot 9/11 on its news programs following the broadcast as it did with Day After.