Art Bell - talk radio on the fringe

Has anyone heard of this guy, Art Bell?

I listened to his show a couple of times, he had an El Nino expert on there.

#5 of 5: Marshall Stax (coeur) Thu Nov 27 '97 (23:54) 20 lines Art Bell is a minor phenomenon who has hit upon a currently hot vein of thinking and has managed to mine that vein better than anyone else. I love his show, when he's on a subject I care about. He follows the old Larry King policy of not screening calls, so the whackos and nut cases do get on... difference is they *stay* on this show! Larry would always come back with "He gets one call a week from the home & he calls here!" to the caller as he hung up and went to another caller. My main problem with Art Bell is that he's on so late it's hard to find time to hear his show. You can always tape it, but that's four hours of time to find later to listen... maybe three with the ability to scan past the news & ads, but still a lot of time. I also like Art's attitude of letting the listener decide who's crazy & who's not. He gives most callers a chance to make their case, and doesn't constantly belittle and talk down to his callers. You, as a listener can do as good a job of seperating the good from the bad, and don't need a show host to do your thinking for you. Marshall

For me it's the guests that make the show work. The Art Bell show is one of the most entertaining shows out there! I am hard pressed to name a place where I can hear better stories than on this show. The material that they come up with is classic. I'm sure that there are Hollywood script writers just pulling there hair out when they hear this stuff. It's so great. I don't believe the stuff that goes on there, but that doesn't matter - It's fun! It always gives me that "War of the Worlds" feeling late at night. Favorite guest - Richard C. Hoagland, with his never-ending explanations of his "investigation". This is the face on Mars guy. Also favorites - Major Ed Dames, the remote viewer from a black CIA project in the '80s; Whitley Strieber, the author; Al Bielick of the Philadelphia Experiment; and the guy that "flew into Area 51 and got shot down"; etc. These guests could never be conjured up by a writer. It is these characters coming on the show and doing there stuff (with Art letting you, the listener, decide whether or not they're nuts) that makes the show great for me.

Art Bell signed off October 12th with a mysterious resignation, reported over some news channels and linked to his web site. See http://www.artbell.com

This is the original story from the Las Vegas Newspaper: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1999/May-28-Fri-1999/news/bell1.html

On a more current note, TIME magazine's August 9th issue has a 2-page spread on Art under the Radio section. It does go into a bit of the matter mentioned above. It is worth a read. Pages 64-65.