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The Sunday Share: Songs which have been themes for talk radio: Art Bell

August 25th, 2024 at 07:05pm

Art Bell was something of a pioneer of overnight talk radio in the US, with a format which has been emulated ever since. A lot of talk radio is political, but Art Bell found that the middle of the night was a good time to discuss more unusual things, and that the night-time audience was much more interested in such discussions than in a continuation of political talk. Art was a storyteller and was captivating when he could find a narrative to wrap around a discussion of the paranormal, the unexplained, or ideas which were outside the mainstream. Art didn’t stay permanently in the paranormal realm, often interviewing various musicians and actors, which probably explains why his show was such a hit as the subject matter, while often familiar, was never repetitive.

Art was also a very good listener, which made him a good interviewer. He could have guests on to discuss all manner of strange and unusual topics, and it really didn’t matter what Art believed on the subject, he was able to have an interesting and intelligent discussion with the guest, no matter how outlandish the guest’s subject or their claims, and get listeners involved as well. He was a true master of the theatre of the mind, and through the height of his popularity through the late 1990s and early 2000s, his show Coast To Coast AM was heard live in just about every market in the US and Canada, attracting millions of listeners in the wee small hours of the night.

After Coast To Coast AM was bought out by Premiere Radio, Art’s career was somewhat more checkered. Art semi-retired a few times citing various reasons for departing and coming back, and hosted weekend shows and served as a guest host on Coast To Coast intermittently for a few years, moving to the Philippines after he remarried and his new wife was not permitted entry to the US. Eventually after an on-again off-again relationship with Coast To Coast AM, he finally left the show permanently in 2011, and in 2013 started a competing show on Sirius XM satellite radio which lasted all of six weeks.

In 2015 he started an online show, again in basically the same format as his Coast To Coast show, this time called Midnight In The Desert. This show was picked up by a handful of terrestrial radio stations and seemed to attract a decent chunk of Art’s old audience who had come to the conclusion that Coast To Coast AM had grown stale without his presence. Indeed, the host since Art’s departure from Coast To Coast AM, George Noory, retained many of Art’s guests but tends to let them just talk for entire segments rather than engaging them in discussion. Art’s Midnight In The Desert show lasted about six months, with multiple technical issues along the way causing various shows to not air or be cut short. Eventually Art left this show after, it was claimed, people opened fire into his studio from the street, although the local police department never confirmed any of this.

Art suffered various health issues after this and died in 2018.

Midnight In The Desert and Coast To Coast AM continue to this day, and myriad of other paranormal-themed overnight shows have also appeared. It is now a thriving genre and a mainstay of US talk radio. Naturally some shows are better than others, and the ones where the host is a good storyteller and can engage in interesting conversation with the guests are probably the closest thing there is to a natural successor to Art’s legacy.

While Art was hosting Coast To Coast AM, Crystal Gayle performed a song called Midnight In The Desert which Art often used as his closing theme.

When Art launched the Midnight In The Desert show in 2015, he continued to use The Chase theme from Midnight Express as his opening theme, just as Coast To Coast AM continues to do to this day, but also continued to use Midnight In The Desert as his closing theme. Upon launching this show in 2015, he interviewed Crystal Gayle about the song.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: The Sunday Share

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