As it happened with the NBC's 1983 film Special Bulletin, despite having This Is a Work of Fiction disclaimers during the entirety of the broadcast, and the film coming with a disclaimer after each commercial break in all airings, there were reports of people calling ABC, Fox, NBC and CBS affiliates regarding the incident and whether it was actually happening. There're at least several CBS affiliates that refused to air the movie because of that.
The use of an actual reporter for the film ended in a CNN's order for its reporters and anchors to not play themselves or any other role in a fictional movie of this style.
CBS broadcasted the film once and nothing else. It took several years to its release in DVD, on July 8, 2003, in the US. In other English-speaking countries, like in the United Kingdom, the film was broadcast several times on cable. It was exported to other regions, such as Latin America.
CBS' original broadcast with commercials and disclaimers was uploaded to YouTube on November 30th, 2019. 25 years after the original broadcast.
General trivia:
During the film's broadcast, CBS had warnings during the commercial breaks stating that the film was completely fictional, and that the events were not actually happening. Some CBS affiliates, such as KHOU in Houston, had similar warnings in the form of a news ticker "crawl" during the broadcast. The producers used actual CBS News graphics to help accentuate the feeling that it was real (though they used a different network logo, a sphere within an outline of a TV screen), however, leading to at least one uproar over the events. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, the CBS affiliate (KFSM-TV) reported that they had received dozens of calls regarding the incident and whether it was actually happening. The area's ABC, Fox, and NBC affiliates (respectively KHBS, KPBI and KPOM-TV) were also flooded with complaints, asking them why they were not covering this event at the same time that CBS was covering it. In several other markets, including Detroit, Michigan, and San Diego, California, the local CBS affiliates (respectively, WJBK, which would switch to Fox six weeks later, and KFMB-TV) refused to air this TV movie. Some accused CBS of being irresponsible in showing the movie during the primetime hours, when some children were still out trick-or-treating (even though the movie actually aired the night before Halloween). Indeed, the film explicitly takes place on Oct. 31, with trick or treaters featured in several news reports within, but very few occasions have happened since Orson Welles' 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast (which also aired on October 30) that so many people have been taken in by a production such as Without Warning. The film borrowed one of the locations from Welles' broadcast. Welles used the village of Grover's Mill, New Jersey, as the first landing site of the Martians in his tale. Without Warning uses the fictional town of Grover's Mill, Wyoming, as a homage to Welles' broadcast, and the original broadcast was preceded by a brief prologue referencing the War of the Worlds broadcast, with the narrator reiterating that the film about to be shown was fiction and presented in the same spirit.
