This thread remined me of 1983’s Special Bulletin.
Ah, 1983… The Cold War was on. A scary cowboy was in the Oval Office. (cue: ‘Shiny Shiny’… ‘Go nuclear,’ the Cowboy told us / And who am I to disagree? / For when the madman flips the switch / The nuclear will go for me…) Yes, there was a time when people were as concerned about a nuclear war as they are today about terrorist attacks. And then came Special Bulletin…
In the spirit of War of the Worlds, Special Bulletin was presented as ‘live news coverage’ of a terrorist nuclear threat. The show starts out with a commercials for laundry soap (or something) and a new game show called The Four Squares. The Network cuts in with a special announcement. A terrorist group have docked their tugboat in Charleston harbour. They attack coastguardsmen who come to check them out. The attack was captured on film by an elderly tourist with a super-8 camera. (Amusingly, since I was making super-8 films then, the old man was holding his camera backwards.) When a news crew shows up, the reporter and his cameraman are taken hostage. The terrorist demand a live news feed.
These are not terrorists as we think of them today. That is, they don’t really want to detonate a nuclear device. They are two scientists, a political activist, and a criminal. They are sick of the Cold War, and feel that one side or the other must back down before the world is vapourised. As Americans, they choose the U.S. to back down and start destroying their nuclear weapons. In doing so, the USSR will have the incentive to reduce their nuclear stockpile. (At least, that’s their theory.) They say that there are over 200 nuclear detonators on submarines in Charleston harbour. They demand that these detonators be turned over to them so that they can take them out to sea and destroy them. The scientists have constructed a low-yield nuclear device and have installed it in the tugboat. There is a timer on it that will detonate it unless it is disabled, so the U.S. must turn over the detonators pronto. There are anti-tamper devices on it so that, in the event they are killed, the bomb will detonate. There are motion detectors on it so that the tugboat can’t be forcibly moved.
As I said, this film was presented as if it were actually happening. I’ve heard that some stations had a screen crawl every ten minutes that said it was a dramatisation. (In SoCal, where I lived, I don’t remember seeing any screen crawls; just a disclaimer during the commercial breaks. I’ve heard that in some parts of the country, the disclaimer said ‘This is a dramatisation’ and then added ‘(Fiction)’.)
I think the filmmakers did an excellent job capturing the broadcasts of the early-1980s. The commercials at eh beginning were spot-on, as were the portrayals of the TV News Personalities. It was very realistic. (Today, of course, it looks a little ludicrous – nobody really has hair like that – but that’s how it really was back then! Today, who would believe that newscasters are shallow? 
)
As the film progressed, it got less realistic. That is, the scenes on the ‘live feed’ from the tugboat were a little too ‘well acted’. That is, the actors were acting scared; as if they were in a film. But since it was a film, it was okay. Overall, I think it held up very well.
I’ll repeat: The Cold War was on. There was a very real threat of missiles flying. Special Bulletin reminded people of the insanity of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). I remember the anti-nuclear protests taking place in the U.S. and Europe at the time. It was a Big Issue. I think that Special Bulletin helped to raise the public consciousness of nuclear weapons proliferation. It attempted to scare them into stopping the madness.
And it was a scathing commentary on Network News. (Scientist: ‘I like how you put up the graphics and the music there, John. Very impressive.’) It portrayed the ‘talking heads’ as a pack of know-nothing boobs whose comprehension of the issues were as shallow as a saucer. Their ‘hard-hitting’ questions were as stupid then as the ones we still see today. By extension, it showed the lack of depth in the American Public in general. After all, people watch these shows. The insistence of the network and local stations on showing the repeated disclaimers indicates that the Networks feel that the viewers were not intelligent enough to know that they were just watching a movie. Things hadn’t changed much since War of the Worlds.
I have Special Bulletin on VHS tape – both recorded off the air at the time, and a video copy that I bought. It doesn’t hold up well now, over 20 years later, because the style of broadcasting and advertising has changed quite a bit. Many viewers who were not alive then, or small children, might not remember what TV was like in the early-80s. (It would be like me being aware of Huntley & Brinkley.) Many younger people today don’t remember the Cold War. Nevertheless, Special Bulletin still has some relevance if one can transport one’s mind to the mindset of the time. Even knowing it was fiction, Special Bulletin was scary back then. That stuff might really have happened.