Yes. The transit time from Mars is too short to be realistic.
That was the problem with the broadcast. Didn’t seem to bother those who fell for it. I mean, really, I’ve got it on record (LP) around here somewhere, and there’s the “we return you to our program of dance music” breaks that last a short time, then the dead soldiers have been moved from the encounter site to a hospital and autopsied, and they’d died of burns or whatever (for example). Some of the radio stations used to rebroadcast that on Halloweens when I was a kid, and it was a curiousity item at best, but people here and there around the country continued to have that hysterical reaction every once in a while.