Insomniac Radio King Art Bell Reclaims His Crown

Not much happens in the patch of the Mojave Desert an hour’s drive west of Las Vegas’ nonstop carnival. It’s hot during the day. Most nights the sky fills with stars. Sometimes there’s a lightning or dust storm.

But since July, two events have shaken the typically sleepy region. After decades of obfuscation, the CIA acknowledged the existence and location of Area 51, a base for testing secret military aircraft that has long been central to UFO lore. And Art Bell, whose late-night radio show once attracted an audience of millions of loyal insomniacs, announced he was returning to the airwaves full time after more than 10 years away.

For Bell fans, the timing wasn’t a coincidence. They are the sort of people inclined to believe the government knows more about mysterious shapes in the sky than it lets on. Bell has been speaking and listening to them since 1984, broadcasting first from Las Vegas and then, after 1988, from a studio in his home in Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 36,441 not far from Area 51.

From 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. E.T., six days a week, Bell held forth on all manner of science, science fiction and science-maybe-fiction in his smoky, spooky voice. He was a one-man band, cuing the bumper music, taking calls and interviewing guests entirely on his own, explaining everything from clairvoyance to the chupacabra in a relaxed but foreboding style. From 1997 to 2002, his Coast to Coast AM was one of the five most-listened-to shows on talk radio, syndicated to as many as 500 North American stations and attracting a peak weekly audience of 15 million. Then Bell walked away.

Bell had taken breaks before, most notably a two-week spell in 1998 after his son was molested by a teacher and a longer one in 2000 to deal with the ongoing fallout. When he retired in 2002, Bell agreed to host weekends, saying the lighter load would ease his back problems. Weeknights were ceded to George Noory, his eventual successor. As Noory took command, Bell’s hosting duties gradually tapered off. He last appeared on the show he created in 2010.

Bell says the decision to come out of retirement was entirely his, a response to the direction that Noory has taken the show–closer to talk radio’s overcaffeinated political chat (Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist best known for claiming that the government perpetrated the Boston bombings, is a regular guest) than the open-minded exploration of the supernatural that defined Bell’s tenure. Noory, he says, has “ruined” the franchise. Noory declined to speak to Time; a spokesperson for his syndicator, Premiere Networks, said the company is “fortunate” to have him.

“Not a chance in hell,” Bell says, when asked if he would ever return to his old show. “It’s not personal. It’s just an institutional hatred. I really hate them.”

But he still loves radio, and listeners still love him. And that’s why, at age 68, after a sojourn in the Philippines, Bell is back in Pahrump preparing for his return. From a studio in a double-wide trailer on his property, the onetime king of insomniac radio is working out the kinks of what will debut Sept. 16 on Sirius XM satellite radio as Art Bell’s Dark Matter. It will run live from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. E.T., four nights a week (reruns will air the rest of the week), though Bell says he plans to go an extra hour most nights, putting his new show in competition with the first hour of his old one. Dark Matter will feel familiar to Coast fans: Bell plans to cover the same topics, with many of the same guests, and he’s even recruited the old Coast announcer to set the mood.

But more than a decade away can sow doubts, even among the best. “Memories grow fond over time,” Bell says, fretting over his return. “My listeners may remember me being better than I was.”

Talking Through the Night

America’s overnight army–insomniacs, long-haul truckers, emergency-room nurses–need something to keep them company while the rest of the country sleeps. Radio has long been a willing companion. The format favors good listeners and drawn-out discussion, an even keel over daytime’s hot temper.

Long John Nebel, a New York City–based disc jockey, dominated the overnight air in the 1960s with a call-in show heavy on tales of ghosts, aliens and witches, according to Michael Keith, an expert in radio and American culture at Boston College. The supernatural gave way to political chat in the 1970s, with Larry King as the standard-bearer. But King’s move to daytime in 1993 opened the door for a return of the weird, and Bell burst through it.

He moved away from politics and embraced the solitude of the night and the possibility of the desert. Who better to talk about Area 51, after all, than the man broadcasting from its shadow, who claimed to have seen things out there “that’d make your hair curl”?

Simply listening to Bell, though, could make your hair curl. It wasn’t just the creepy topics–aliens, monsters, life after death, parallel universes–but the way he milked the theater of every moment. Callers often sounded impatient, breathless, as if they knew too much and were running out of time to share it. You, almost certainly alone somewhere in the dark, were scared. You had to be.

Bell ministered to the overnight army and added a large contingent of sci-fi junkies to its ranks. In the days before everyone had endless microtargeted media options on demand, Bell pitched a very big tent. And that audience remained during Bell’s years away, hungry for his return. Every vague comeback rumor was met with a flurry of online anticipation.

That’s what Sirius XM was after. Satellite radio’s business model relies on hosts with fans passionate enough to pay for a subscription. The company had been hunting for an “Art Bell type,” says Jeremy Coleman, Sirius XM’s boss of talk programming. “Then I had one of those ‘Duh’ moments. What about actual Art Bell?” Coleman got to “stalking” Bell on social media, eventually paying to send him a priority message on Facebook. Coleman’s pitch: “I told him that the show would work only if he actually spoke the truth … We want one thing from Art Bell, and it’s Art Bell.”

Bell, who had resisted comeback offers from smaller syndicators, was sold. “I’m on extraterrestrial radio now,” he says, relishing the turn of phrase.

Though the deal was modest by his standards–Bell says he’ll earn $75,000 annually, plus half of the show’s profits for three years–he was drawn by the freedom it offered: few commercial breaks, total creative control and the chance to prove that his brand of weird still has a following among America’s overworked and underslept.

The audience for conspiracies and antigovernment screeds is vast, but Bell says he doesn’t want them. “George can keep them,” Bell says with a smile. He’s after a different demographic: “The sane fringe.”

On a recent August day, bell seems in better shape than he was the last time he was on the air regularly. He traded his Marlboro Lights for electronic cigarettes, and his 29-year-old fourth wife Airyn and their 6-year-old daughter Asia keep him spry. He looks like a droopier version of his 1990s self–not a bad outcome given the hours he keeps. (Bell never goes to bed before 2 a.m.) He says his time abroad rejuvenated him too. He moved to Manila to marry Airyn in 2006, three months after his wife’s unexpected death from an asthma attack.

Night has long since fallen over the Kingdom of Nye, as Bell called his home county in the old Coast intro. The sky is pitch black; just a few stars are bright enough to slice through the inky pall. Normally you can see the Milky Way, but the unseasonable humidity, Bell says, has ruined the view.

“You know,” he says, “I wish you had come on another night, to see it for yourself. It’s really something.” But it’s not an option. I’ll just have to take Art Bell’s word for it.