| Friday, June 6, 1997 | Section: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE
| BROADCASTING THE BIZARRE
| By Jeff Daniel Of The Post-Dispatch Staff
| PAHRUMP, NEVADA<
| THE TIME was late March, the Heaven's Gate suicide story still burned red hot, and the media types now had a new, sensational angle. Radio talk show host Art Bell, they learned, had devoted several of his overnight programs to the theoretical possibility that some sort of spacecraft rode the tailwind of the Hale-Bopp comet. These were shows, reporters noted with whetted appetites, that aired before Marshall Applewhite and the gang shed their earthly cocoons and took that final fated ride. The press had a field day - "The Man Who Spread The Myth" read the headline over Time magazine's expose on Bell. "The Heaven's Gate 39 had been awaiting the cue to begin their final act," Time noted, "and last fall it finally came, not in a heavenly vision, but on `Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.' " Bell, inundated with phone calls and missives, denied any ethical or moral wrongdoing, repeatedly making the point that it was a guest - never the host himself - who provided the spaceship theory. Still, the spaceship/comet scenario didn't seem too out of place on Bell's show, a virtual clearinghouse for opinions on the bizarre and the unexplained. A deft mixture of entertainment, news and unbridled conjecture, Bell's programs bring in big numbers - 10 to 15 million listeners tuned in to 366 stations (including St. Louis' KTRS, AM 550) - numbers that rival former late night ruler Larry King. So who is this Art Bell, this phenom of nocturnal radio whose name recognition has suddenly rocketed far beyond the usual orbit of insomniacs, night owls and graveyard-shift workers? And more importantly, what goes on during the wee hours of "Coast to Coast AM," Bell's five-hour weeknight show, and "Dreamland," his Sunday evening program, where the paranormal is the norm, where Bigfoot is big, and where UFOs are often identified. On The Air It's Sunday night in Pahrump, a dusty little town of 7,000 residents 60 miles west of Las Vegas that serves as home for Bell and his combination ranch house/broadcast center. Pahrump sits comfortably in the center of a desert version of the Bermuda Triangle. To the east is Vegas - the land of lost souls and lost quarters. To the west, California's Death Valley - sort of like Vegas, but without the neon and the blue hair. And to the north - Area 51, which is also known as Dreamland, k the site of a super-secret military installation, which is also known as the place where said military just might be experimenting with flying saucers. As the story goes, this is the place where the aliens that crashed in 1947 in Roswell, N.M., might have been taken and still might remain. And so on, and so forth. On this Sunday night in Pahrump, like almost every Sunday night, Bell prepares for another edition of his show, "Dreamland." His 38-year-old wife, Ramona, serves as Bell's complete staff - bringing him faxes, making fresh coffee, reminding Art of little tasks he may have forgotten. In the broadcast booth, (essentially a small, spare bedroom) the 51-year-old Bell flies solo. The show, as well as his regular "Coast to Coast AM" program, reaches the airwaves by way of this one-man engineer/producer/information director/star. Dressed comfortably in black sweats and running shoes, Bell takes long, extended drags on his cigarette as he looks over material for the night's broadcast which, coincidentally, features Brad Steiger - a prolific writer on paranormal subjects and the author of a late-'70s book on Marshall Applewhite and his followers. Bell cues up a sound cart. The room, which is packed with every conceivable type of new and vintage radio gear, grows silent. Then, as the new-age music swirls in the background and after the pre-recorded announcer introduces the show, Bell begins a conversation with his guests and audience that flows seamlessly throughout the night. The host seems sincerely interested in tonight's topics, as do his callers. Animal totems. Severe climatic changes. Crop circles. Mysteriously deformed amphibians. Bell sips his ever-present coffee through a straw and leans back in his '70s moderne chair, all the while enjoying his job more than any worker should ever be allowed to. For Bell, and for millions of listeners across the country, it's just another normal night in "Dreamland." The Road To Dreamland "You wanna know what makes Art so popular?" asks Chancellor Broadcasting president Alan Corbeth. It's lunchtime at the Saddle West Restaurant and Casino in Pahrump, and Corbeth and kindred soul Bell are discussing their enormous ratings success over the homestyle fare. "Art understands the people that are tuning in through the ether out there," explains Corbeth, who like Bell has spent his life fiddling with radio equipment and working in the business. "He knows the nuts and bolts of the industry, and he has an appreciation that can't be taught. You're either born with it, or you're not - and Art definitely was born with it." And it's not as if Bell, a native Texan, is an overnight success. i Licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as a technician at age 13, he's worked in commercial radio for more than 30 years, handling practically every niche and format from news announcer to rock 'n' roll deejay to engineer to talk show host. nHe's worked in freezing Anchorage, and in torrid Tijuana. But a gig at KDWN in Las Vegas in the early '80s led to the end of Bell's wandering and the beginning of his success. Using KDWN's 50,000 watts, Bell built a following over a 13-state area in the Southwest, impressing listeners with his knowledge of politics and world events, as well as his ability to stay on the air for the overnight period. Corbeth, a former National Public Radio staffer in Washington, was impressed. An alliance formed, and by way of Chancellor Broadcasting, Bell moved into syndication. His markets and ratings climbed steadily. There was one last move to make before uber-popularity arrived. According to Bell, it was a move that he deemed necessary and appropriate. In early 1994, Bell added "Dreamland" as a regular Sunday night feature program. The paranormal and unexplainable subjects it featured proved to be entertaining, and, ultimately, more interesting than the political talk that dominated "Coast to Coast AM." (Bell is a self-described mixed breed of fiscal conservative and libertarian.) During the past year, the line between Bell's two shows has increasingly blurred. The weeknight programs leaned away from talks of unbalanced budgets and the latest Clinton scandal to discussions on entities such as the Chupacabra - a demonic winged predator that reportedly was sucking the blood from livestock in the Southwest and in Mexico. "When it was a standard political talk show like everyone else's, it was successful," Bell says. "But the political climate changed - became more mundane - and I began to get bored. "And I figured that if I'm getting bored, then my audience must be getting bored as well." So Bell livened things up, subsequently tapping into a booming national interest in the mystical, the conspiratorial and the unknown. But unlike many of his guests and callers, Bell can hardly be categorized as a true believer. "I believe in very little - with UFOs, the paranormal or even politics," Bell confides over the din of clanging quarters and rolling slots at the Saddle West. "I believe in what I can prove and what I can get my hands on," he says. "But then again, I'm not automatically a disbeliever. I just see myself as an interviewer, an inquisitor." And therein lies the secret to Bell's success. Judge nothing - let the ideas flow and the public can decide what to believe or disbelieve. A sort of populist philosophy minus the vitriol of a G. Gordon Liddy. "That's the entertainment value," Bell adds. "Instead of shredding someone on the air - which has been a traditional talk radio manner of handling things - I prefer to help my guests and callers tell their stories. "And that's whether it's leading toward a total lack of credibility on their part or just the opposite. Simply put, I try to help get the story out. I'll leave the rest to Mike Wallace." During the Heaven's Gate controversy, Bell's free-flow system of ideas came under fire. Yet if he had it all to do over again, Bell insists he would have done nothing differently. "There's no question we discussed the possible existence of a companion to Hale-Bopp," Bell says. "But before I went on the air, I had an Emory University professor (Courtney Brown) saying it was so. I had a physics graduate student prepared to discuss the photographs." And when Bell figured out that the claims were fraudulent, "we exposed it first on our program." Bell still expresses bitterness toward the press reaction, which he describes as "two days of breaking news claiming `Art Bell Killed 39 People.' And that's the way they wanted it." But as the details began to emerge, he continues, the focus of the story began to shift "as they realized they couldn't blame me for something that had been planned for a couple of decades." To Paul Kurtz, the Heaven's Gate episode reflects the inherent problem of Bell's program - a forum he labels as "dangerously irresponsible." "The public is just inundated with waves of paranormal nonsense, and Art Bell plays this stuff up," says Kurtz, a professor emeritus at State University of New York at Buffalo. As chairman of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Kurtz finds himself in constant disagreement with Bell and many of his guests. According to Kurtz, Bell is profiting from "this whole UFO paranormal explosion. Bell contributes to these wild tales, and it's this sort of packaging by the media that makes things dangerous." Sensationalism sells, Kurtz argues, and any article about "a two-headed monster or that Bigfoot is an alien" is bound to become a big seller. `Things Are Out There' Kurtz' observation - right or wrong - raises another interesting question: why the increased "explosion" in the paranormal interest that figures in Bell's accelerating success? Ask Bell, and he points again to the public's disillusionment with Washington. "I was doing this long before anyone else," he says proudly. "So I was in place when the country decided that it was fed up with non-relevant political arguments and began to turn to these topics." Whitley Strieber, author of "Communion" (an account of Strieber's recollection of his alien abductions), appears regularly on Bell's show. Bell, he believes, covers many of the issues that the public has always wanted to explore, but which the conventional media ignores. "People know things are out there," Strieber says from his Texas home. "They are curious, and they turn to Art for coverage on these issues." Strieber considers himself a "disbeliever" who would still be a garden variety skeptic if he hadn't had the "face-to-face encounters that I can't explain." "Art's big strength is his willingness to admit there's an unknown out there," Strieber continues. "The downside is that he's forced to talk about some things that may not be true. He really has to walk a tightrope as far as being critical, and I think he walks that tightrope very well." For Stanton Friedman, the so-called "explosion" has been taking place for the more than 30 years. As the original investigator of the Roswell crash, Friedman has lectured on UFOs in all 50 states, in dozens of countries. The interest has always been present, he explains, and Bell "is a sharp, talented host who knows what's going on out there." "Art has recognized the audience for the far-out and the bizarre," explains Friedman, whose physics classmates at the University of Chicago included the late Carl Sagan, an antagonist about the future. "But he's had on enough respectable people like me to attract an audience. Like Strieber and Friedman, Linda Moulton-Howe appears regularly with Bell, serving as the news reporter for the opening half-hour of "Dreamland." An award-winning news producer, Moulton-Howe has become famous for her research into the phenomena of crop circles and cattle mutilation. "Over the past years, there have been many more people reporting encounters and sightings," she says. "I would say that the subject now cuts through a much larger swath of the general audience, and `Dreamland' taps into this." Tuning In To St. Louis Jacqueline Charak would often listen to music when experiencing a fitful night of sleep. It calmed her, and kept her from obsessing on the dead silence of the early morning hours. Then, about three years ago, her husband, David, changed things foreve r: Jacqueline, like millions of other late-night listeners, received her introduction to Art Bell. Now the Clayton couple is positively hooked. "We each have our own radio by the bed, and we plug in to the show when we wake up in the middle of the night," laughs Charak, an interior designer during daylight. "Sometimes we're plugged in at the same time, so we start up these running conversations - not the most conducive thing for getting back to sleep." Charak finds herself attracted to Bell's intelligence and civility, but most importantly, she "loves anything about UFOs." Apantha Elrod, a member of the UFO Group of St. Louis, explains that Bell is a regular topic at the organization's monthly meetings. Like Charak, she's fond of the show's tone and subject matter. "The guests are interesting, but he also gets calls from people with valuable information," Elrod says. Outside of her UFO interest group, however, Elrod rarely discusses Bell. It's a sentiment that Charak can relate to. "Sometimes at dinner with friends, David and I will bring up the show," relates Charak. "They just give us strange looks and ask `Why aren't you sleeping? Why are you listening to this?' "We discuss some of the topics, and they just act like we're crazy," she laughs. "But, hey, it's a lot of fun." Kenn Thomas, however, takes Bell's show more seriously than most listeners might. Although he's not a huge fan, Thomas occasionally tunes in to see if Bell's topic of the night sparks some interest. As publisher of S teamshovel Press, a journal devoted to writings on conspiracies and cover-ups, Thomas is familiar with many of Bell's guests. "But a problem with the program is exclusivity," says Thomas, who works as an archivist at a local educational institution. "There's still an undercurrent of beliefs that doesn't make it to the show at all. "Bell provides an alternative, which is good," he adds. "But he doesn't provide the full alternative." (One of those alternatives might be Thomas, whose research has sought links between the John F. Kennedy assassination and the earliest UFO sightings.) Happiness Happens Bell and Corbeth exit the Saddle West, filled from a nice meal and ready to resume negotiations on a deal that will earn Bell a new seven-year contract. The desert sky hangs low and heavy - perhaps this will be one of those rare rainy days that have been known to pop up in Pahrump. Bell seems unfazed by the gloom. He's a happy man. He's doing what he likes. He's a success. "But I don't try to think about the reasons for success," he says in the restaurant's crowded parking lot. "The show just happens."

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