Changes that degraded the C2C listening experience.

[Mr. Fidget]

I have a short list of things I think put C2C in decline, aside from Art leaving of course.

[Not listed in order of importance.]

1) "The Honors"
     When Art ended the show by letting the last caller (and/or sometimes the guest) say goodbye to America, and the world. It made the end of every show different, and special. Now it's just a repetitive pitch reel.

2) "Unscreened calls"
    Spontaneity was the the hallmark of Art's show. You can't have spontaneity from a caller who has been on hold, vetted for topic, and communication ability/style. Life has all kinds of characters, they are not even slightly represented by the abomination that is 2014's C2C. All they need is a host who can use the dump button to fix this.

3) "Wide variety of topics"
    C2C (as noted elsewhere on bellgab) should not be a monthly/quarterly rotation of shills. The world is full of people with a wide variety of experiences to share, instead nowadays it is a handful of guests, and they always have a book or website to pitch.

4) "Open lines"
    Having open lines was what kept Art on his toes, provided breaking news from real people, and brought forth unusual characters. That spontaneity was what made Art's show something to make sure you heard... nightly. Not anymore. A perfect example is how some members of bellgab say which shows they are/are not going to listen once they see the schedule for the week.

5) "Roundtables"
     Hearing dissenting views, numerous topical experts, and a basic intent to cover a whole topic was great radio.

6) "Staffing"
     Host hiring decisions have been made by people, apparently, without the "perception" to discern the actual oratory/communication ability (or lack thereof) of said hired host.


    I'm sure there are more, that however is my short list of why Coast to Coast is hardly a quantifiable fraction of what it was. 

[paladin1991]

Hiring Fucking Jorch Snoory.

[smitty9999]

I don't think hiring George was necessarily a bad thing; I'd argue to say it was the corporate take over of the show.

Also, looking through the giant Art Bell torrent that was uploaded to the site, Art had a lot of the same guests rotating through the shows. so let's try to remove our rose coloured glasses of the "good ol days"

[paladin1991]

I don't think hiring George was necessarily a bad thing; I'd argue to say it was the corporate take over of the show.

Also, looking through the giant Art Bell torrent that was uploaded to the site, Art had a lot of the same guests rotating through the shows. so let's try to remove our rose coloured glasses of the "good ol days"

OH.  Okay.

[onan]

I don't think hiring George was necessarily a bad thing; I'd argue to say it was the corporate take over of the show.

Also, looking through the giant Art Bell torrent that was uploaded to the site, Art had a lot of the same guests rotating through the shows. so let's try to remove our rose coloured glasses of the "good ol days"

I will remove my rose colored glasses when you remove the shit from your ears.

Yes same guests... but very different interviews. And if you can't grasp that... noory is probably just about right for you.

[Mr. Fidget]

   I don't remember Art having people on so frequently that I noticed the repetition so acutely.
   Art had a significantly larger guest pool to draw from, and far less of the little "shill-o-matic" vibe in his presentation of them.
   Comparing the current abomination that is Noory's C2C to what Art did is tough to do.

   One was theatre of the mind, the other is just a promotion/distraction/disinformation mechanism.

[zeebo]

My experience was noticably degraded after I got a better radio because now Noory and all his grunts and mouth-breathing and grammatical manglings and sucky bumper music comes through loud and clear.

[nooryisawesome]

Well like Ian said on his podcast, premier decided they wanted a more traditional host to replace art.

Noory sucks

More political topics

Issues that were covered a lot by art bell are ignored now
Time travel, after death experiences.

Noory sucks at open lines, special lines etc so they are rarely done and when done suck.

No host have the sense of humor art has.

Noory is a idiot and when discussing politics adds nothing that mainstream media has not covered.

Art was always in front of the media cycle. Coast to Coast now is always behind.

Due to lack of open lines, odd stories which become really cool like Mel's hole, Area 51 fly over, etc go unheard due to Noory's inability to develop these stories.

More commercials.

Horrid and ill timed cheesy bumper music destroys atmosphere

Norry spends I much time trying to be fake than have people get to the freaking point. As a result callers and guest can ramble for 20 minutes while george surfs the internet and tosses out a absowootely on occasion. Guest like hogue who allegedly make predictions, go four hours and only make "predictions" like an earthquake somewhere, there will be earth changes, and people have millennial fever. So there is no actual verifiable prediction just a bunch of vague obvious stuff that occurs everyday garbage.

Seemingly stagnant guest pool. Ramona and art were awesome at finding weird guests.

There is a lot more but it's pointless to type it all out. Because the biggest issue is no one tries to correct any of these issues. As a result listnership has fallen dramatically from 10 million to 3 million. Although noory thinks he is doing better than art because he has more affiliates and thinks nothing is wrong with the show, when obviously 7 million people left, shit is messed up.

[nooryisawesome]

It Pisses me off George Noory claims Coast to Coast am has never had more listners. It an out and out LIE. George noory himself  admitted and talkers confirms he has 3.00 million. Noory lies and continues to lie about it, by stating on air the show has most listners ever. Its Bullshit.


With an estimated 10 million listeners, Bell’s show was at the time of his retirement the most listened-to late-night radio program, and fourth overall behind Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, and Dr. Laura.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=109935


ART BELL spoke to 10 to 15 million listeners per week, fourth among all talk-show hosts of the era

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/09/16/art-bell-radios-most-popular-weirdo-returns/



From 1998

The outer limits: A lone voice in the desert lures 10 million listeners.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/the-outer-limits-a-lone-voice-in-the-desert-lures-10-million-listeners/2013/10/28/95615598-3ff6-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html

[albrecht]

I have a short list of things I think put C2C in decline, aside from Art leaving of course.

[Not listed in order of importance.]

1) "The Honors"
     When Art ended the show by letting the last caller (and/or sometimes the guest) say goodbye to America, and the world. It made the end of every show different, and special. Now it's just a repetitive pitch reel.

2) "Unscreened calls"
    Spontaneity was the the hallmark of Art's show. You can't have spontaneity from a caller who has been on hold, vetted for topic, and communication ability/style. Life has all kinds of characters, they are not even slightly represented by the abomination that is 2014's C2C. All they need is a host who can use the dump button to fix this.

3) "Wide variety of topics"
    C2C (as noted elsewhere on bellgab) should not be a monthly/quarterly rotation of shills. The world is full of people with a wide variety of experiences to share, instead nowadays it is a handful of guests, and they always have a book or website to pitch.

4) "Open lines"
    Having open lines was what kept Art on his toes, provided breaking news from real people, and brought forth unusual characters. That spontaneity was what made Art's show something to make sure you heard... nightly. Not anymore. A perfect example is how some members of bellgab say which shows they are/are not going to listen once they see the schedule for the week.

5) "Roundtables"
     Hearing dissenting views, numerous topical experts, and a basic intent to cover a whole topic was great radio.

6) "Staffing"
     Host hiring decisions have been made by people, apparently, without the "perception" to discern the actual oratory/communication ability (or lack thereof) of said hired host.


    I'm sure there are more, that however is my short list of why Coast to Coast is hardly a quantifiable fraction of what it was. 

Pretty much covers it. Especially the screened calls. Either there are not a lot of callers these days or they are screening them hard. Because these days C2C it seems we get the same callers, day after day, and, interestingly, they always praise "how great" George is etc.

[henge0stone]

I don't hate noory as much as some people but Art is so much better its hard to even compare them. He still has some good guests and topics like the Black eyed kids and the story of people missing in the wilderness. Still its these guests who basically carry the show. Noory really doesn't add anything, doesn't ask the tough questions.

Open lines is horrendous with him. He lets people drone on and on forever. If he has a really good guest or topic I'll listen but otherwise he is bland. Art on the other hand made EVERY topic interesting. I found myself listening to topics like global warming and still being entertained. Art really couldn't go wrong and made every wide topic fun.