BY LEE PFEIFFER
Writing on the Mental Floss web site, Jake Rossen recalls the impact of the 1983 ABC-TV airing of the controversial film "The Day After" starring Jason Robards. The movie was director Nicholas Meyer's warning to the world about the dangers of a nuclear war. At the time, the Cold War was very much in play and the stakes were high. ABC found they could get scant advertisers to sponsor a program with saw the destruction of America through the eyes of residents of a small Kansas town. To the network's credit, it aired the film anyway. What they lost in advertising revenue over two hours, they made up for in prestige. The show, which aired in the days when cable TV was in its infancy, attracted an astonishing 62 million viewers. (It would later be released overseas as a theatrical feature film in a slightly extended version.) Those of us of a certain age who recall watching it were left deeply moved and very upset as we watched the "lucky" survivors cope with facing a slow, torturous death. Perhaps in this modern era of a pandemic, it would still be difficult to watch even in the post-Cold War era, as our nightly news presents scenes of an America that seems scarcely recognizable, with desperate teams of physicians and nurses working in hellish, over-crowded hospitals- much like the scenario presented in "The Day After". The film represented a time period in which the three major networks were proud to produce and telecast controversial productions that often had a societal impact (think "Roots".) "The Day After" certainly did and it's been theorized that President Reagan was so moved by what he saw that he redoubled his efforts to finalize important arms limitation deals with the Soviets.
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