Thanks to the recent generous offer from TIGHAR I took the opportunity to upgrade my membership and received the additional materials available to members at the researcher level. I was most interested to hear for myself the March of Time dramatized reenactment of the Earhart disappearance. Having listened to the brief skit several times now, I find it absolutely incredible that anyone could possibly mistake the dramatized distress signals from AE for actual distress calls. Not only does the Earhart character deliver her pleas in a completely unemotional monotone (to me wholly unbelievable given the circumstances they are recreating) but it is difficult to believe that anyone would not also hear the dialog that so closely frames the distress signals. Even more astounding is that many of the Earhart calls, as is most of the dramatization as a whole, are underscored with music! But nevertheless, as incredible as it may seem they apparently were indeed mistaken for the real distress calls as evidenced by references found in several contemporary newspaper articles discussed in another thread
http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,16.msg774.html#msg774 and elsewhere. I recently came across another reference to "a radioman for Inter-Island Airways flying from Hawaii [who] mistook the March of Time broadcast for an S.O.S. from Earhart's missing aircraft. The radioman immediately notified officials that he had heard a 'conversation between the lost pilot and ships at sea.' [...] Eventually it was discovered that the man had intercepted the 'shortwave relay of the March of Time program from San Francisco to Hawaii.'" (fn indicates source: Lawrence Lichty and Thomas W. Bohn, "Radio's March of Time: Dramatized News," Journalism Quarterly 51:3, pp. 458-62.) This passage is quoted from what I found to be a very good book about 1930 radio news broadcasts, and also about the Welles War of the Worlds broadcast and it's reception: Robert Brown, Manipulating the Ether: The Power of Broadcast Radio in Thirties America (1998), p.200.