The War of the Worlds (radio drama) relatively few listeners. The one-hour program began with the theme music for the "Mercury Theatre on the Air" and an announcement that the evening's show was an adaption of "The War of the Worlds". This was followed by a prologue read by Orson Welles which was closely based on the opening of H.G. Wells' novel. The next half hour of the broadcast was presented as typical evening of radio programming which was interrupted by a series of news bulletins. The first few bulletins interrupt a program of dance music and describe a series of odd explosions observed on Mars. This
Around the World with Orson Welles with the first broadcast scheduled for September 1955. However, Welles's other commitments interfered with his ability to meet deadlines, and much of the series was left incomplete. Welles spent much of 1955 working on writing, directing and acting in his London stage production "Moby Dick—Rehearsed", and after that flopped on the West End, he switched to shooting an (aborted) film adaptation of the play, first in London, and then in Rome - filming "Moby Dick—Rehearsed" in Rome was under the pretext of working on the "Around the World with Orson Welles" TV series. Although Associated-Rediffusion retained a number of rights,