‘Apocalypse TV’: How Media Could Help Save The World In 2024

What could the America of 1983 possibly teach us about today’s media world? Look at that distant time: an enormously divided political environment with a strengthened right wing; fears of an existential threat to our very existence; a violent war in the Middle East; a fraught relationship with the Soviet Union; and new technology (cable TV) disrupting long-standing consumer behavior and business models for everyone in media. Hmm, actually sounds a little familiar, no?

In the fall of 1983 over 100 million Americans (at the same time) watched a single TV film, The Day After, which delivered a frightening vision of the aftermath of a fictional nuclear attack on the heart of the American homeland. Apocalypse TV from University of Southern California Professor David Craig is a fascinating account of how this film shaped history and also provides context for considering how and whether TV – or any media – could change the world today.

My most obvious question to Craig (a former colleague in my Drexel teaching days) was why write a book about a single TV movie from the 1980s? As he explained, Craig grew up when TV movies could not only draw huge ratings (The Day After being the biggest ever) but could drive real cultural impact. He pointed to The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman starring Cicely Tyson as a 110-year-old former slave, a film that created a new-found empathy for Black people in a young boy with little exposure to that world. Brian’s Song was another memorable film for our generation that starred two then-unknown actors (James Caan and Billy Dee Williams) in emotional mix of sports and a young athlete’s tragic death. Who knew boys could cry at a movie?

As to The Day After itself, Craig has studied the political, social, and cultural impact of media for years in his academic work so this topic came naturally. In the book, Craig provided an oral history and more from a driven, dedicated collection of key ABC network executives (especially the legendary Brandon Stoddard) and the producer, director, actors and local citizens from Lawrence, Kansas who lived with their hometown being destroyed on film. For those familiar with the “making of” genre of books for TV and movie buffs, Apocalypse TV provides a thrill ride of how a complex project balances creativity and commerce, corporate and aesthetic objectives and if you’re lucky not only gets made but has a lasting impact on the public that sees it.

Years in the making, The Day After arrived at one of the peaks of Cold War tensions with a public unnerved by loose talk of “winnable” nuclear war and a growing grass-roots global movement for a “nuclear freeze.” In fact, I was one of those fresh-faced congressional aides thrown into the cauldron (no pun intended) at the epicenter of freeze activity led by my first boss, then-U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (who plays a minor role in Craig’s book).

Craig told me that some of the executives involved in the making of The Day After were disappointed that it didn’t have a greater long-term impact (after all, nuclear saber-rattling continues to this day from Russia to Iran to North Korea). Yet as the book points out, even a rock-solid conservative President Ronald Reagan seemed to shift his public rhetoric and become more open to entering into nuclear arms talks with the Soviet Union. There is never a straight-line cause and effect (ever try to figure out which media moved purchase decisions?) but the public conversation fueled in part by The Day After did help shine a bright light on a problem often left to the “experts” to solve.

The media world of 1983 (unlike some of our politics) is pretty unrecognizable today. There was no internet, three broadcast TV networks and a few nascent cable channels. Many not even born that year can attest to the cultural resonance of that year’s movie slate which included Return of the Jedi, Tootsie, Flashdance, Vacation, The Big Chill, and Sophie’s Choice. In 2024, who is still talking about Dune 2?

In our fragmented world of media in 2024, can any individual film or TV series have the type of political and cultural impact that we saw from The Day After? There have certainly been hugely entertaining work in recent years that also addressed serious societal years, such as The Handmaid’s Tale with women’s rights and Oppenheimer, also about the existential threat of nuclear war. But it’s so much tougher to break through in this fashion. Craig noted how Oppenheimer was ultimately viewed as a “great watch” but carried little serious discussion about nuclear arms. And Twisters just hit theaters but as one observer recently noted, a film all about weather somehow “opted to exclude even the tiniest nod to the chief driver of extreme weather.” Speaking of climate change, anyone remember Don’t Look Up? Great movie, not such great impact.

Craig thinks the notion of trying to replicate The Day After-type of social or political impact in an individual film or TV series is misplaced. He sees social media as an outlet with far more potential to combine creativity and political impact. Examples of positive impact social media from creators range from Facebook during the Arab Spring to the Obama Administration’s outreach to YouTubers to create videos about health care insurance sign-ups (remember Zach Galifinakis interviewing Obama on Between Two Ferns?). The pandemic demanded the activism of social influencers galore. You couldn’t have greenlit a commercial, never mind a movie, then produced and marketed it in a fashion fast enough to inform the public of the dangers all around them in the spring of 2020. But social media influencers were everywhere creating memes and driving awareness and action. These are the folks in the business of connecting with audiences every day with the credibility and authenticity (at least perceived by their audiences) to drive action.

As Craig told me, “If I had $100 million to spend and wanted to have a positive social or political impact, rather than fund a movie I’d spend it to support hundreds of different social media influencers.” Hey, for you kids out there – here’s another career path in the creator economy – doing good and doing well together. We need it.