Art Bell

At 72 years old, Art Bell has this physical status:

Bell was a rock music disc jockey before he moved into talk radio. His original 1978 late-night Las Vegas program on KDWN was a political call-in show under the name West Coast AM. In 1988, Bell and Alan Corbeth renamed the show Coast to Coast AM and moved its broadcast from the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas to Bell's home in Pahrump.

Bell abandoned conventional political talk in favor of topics such as gun control and conspiracy theories, leading to a significant bump in his overnight ratings. The show's focus again shifted significantly after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Many in the media did not want to be blamed for inciting anti-government or militia actions like the bombing. Subsequently, Bell discussed off-beat topics such as the paranormal, the occult, UFOs, protoscience and pseudoscience. During his tenure at KDWN Bell met and married his third wife, Ramona, who later handled production and management duties for the program.

An article in the February 23, 1997, edition of The Washington Post said that Bell was currently America's highest-rated late-night radio talk show host, broadcast on 328 stations. According to The Oregonian in its June 22, 1997, edition, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell was on 460 stations. At its initial peak in popularity, Coast to Coast AM was syndicated on more than 500 radio stations and claimed 15 million listeners nightly. Bell's studios were located in his home in the town of Pahrump, located in Nye County, Nevada; hence, the voice-over catchphrase, "from the Kingdom of Nye".

Fans regarded Bell as a master showman, noting that he called his show "absolute entertainment" and expressly said he did not necessarily accept every guest or caller's claims, but only offered a forum where they would not be openly ridiculed. Bell was one of only a few talk show hosts who did not screen incoming calls, but this changed in 2006. On the October 31, 2006, edition of Coast to Coast AM, (renamed for the night to Ghost to Ghost AM), Bell was asked why he was now using call-screeners. The explanation given was that for him to use un-screened open phone lines while in the Philippines would require listeners to call there directly at enormous cost to them. Art admitted that he should have chosen New Zealand instead of the Philippines as an alternative to the USA. He said, "It was a bad choice, and I'll regret it, one day, in the near future."

Bell has earned praise from those who declare that the paranormal deserves a mature outlet of discussion in the media as well as the approval of those simply amused by the nightly parade of bizarre, typically fringe topics. Ed Dames, Richard C. Hoagland, Terence McKenna, Dannion Brinkley, David John Oates, and Robert Bigelow were all regular guests. Some of Bell's regular guests continue to appear on Coast to Coast AM now hosted by George Noory.

Bell's own interests, however, extended beyond the paranormal. He interviewed singers Crystal Gayle, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Eric Burdon and Gordon Lightfoot, comedian George Carlin, writer Dean Koontz, hard science fiction writer Greg Bear, X-Files writer/creator Chris Carter, TV talk host Regis Philbin, Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, actor Dan Aykroyd, former Luftwaffe pilot Bruno Stolle, actress Jane Seymour, actress Ellen Muth, actor and TV host Robert Stack, human rights lawyer John Loftus, legendary disc jockey Casey Kasem, UFC commentator Joe Rogan and frequent guests physicist Michio Kaku and SETI astronomers Seth Shostak and H. Paul Shuch.

Beginning in late 1996, Bell was criticized for reporting rumors that Comet Hale–Bopp was being trailed by a UFO. Some speculated that members of the Heaven's Gate group committed mass suicide based on rumors Bell aired, but others dismissed the idea, noting that the Heaven's Gate website stated: "Whether Hale-Bopp has a 'companion' or not is irrelevant from our perspective."

However, the cult's link to Art Bell's homepage also indicates it's likely they first heard about an approaching spaceship during Bell's two-month-long UFO banter with unqualified guests.

Susan Wright reported that later, Bell was also "one of the first to publicize expert opinions refuting the 'alien' companion" said to have been shadowing Hale-Bopp, such as that published in 1998 from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggesting that "the satellite's main diameter is ~30 km," (20 miles) and accordingly natural rather than artificial.

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