BellGab.com Archive

Yes, he used to fill in on a political talk show here in west-central Minnesota/east North Dakota. He was much better at that than he was at hosting Coast. When he was hosting Coast, it always seemed like he had no real understanding of the kinds of topics common on the show; even worse, he seemed to have no interest. That said, I suppose the idea of "topics common to the show" went out the window years ago anyway...

I prefer this host to GN as well, though the point made earlier about this not saying a whole lot is quite valid. I'm still on the fence with Wells, for many of the same reasons others have mentioned. I note with interest that some folks like his voice, and I suppose I can understand that. However, for me, his voice is a problem. I, like many others, listen to C2C at night, in bed, as I am falling asleep. When I try to listen, his voice is so low that in order to hear him, I have to turn the volume up quite a bit. But if his guest has a higher, more tenor voice -- and they all do -- then the guest's voice is an uncomfortable blare. This is bothersome to me, and it sometimes wakes up my wife who has no real interest in C2C. There have been a few times I have had to listen to the show without actually being able to hear Wells, just the guest's response to his questions. That makes for kind of an interesting listening experience!

One other thing that I don't much like is his nearly constant response to things his guests say: "Interesting." Surely a well-paid host of a nationally syndicated radio show should be able to come up with slightly more sophisticated responses. If something is so interesting, one would think it might lead to some sort of intellectual engagement, rather than a simple throw-away remark that means pretty much nothing.

I heard it live and then Ian was on (I think) the next night. I don't believe it was an entire week later. If I remember correctly, he said he was wide awake and waiting for the call from George. And he remembers being completely awake when the call came in. He remembers answering the call and he was making sense right at the start. Then he went off track like that but he said he thought he was still making sense. When George rushed him off the line, Ian was thinking, "What the heck was that? Why did George get me off the line." Then Tommy called right away to make sure Ian was OK. I suppose they thought he had had a stroke, which would be a reasonable suspicion to have. But Ian was just fine.

Yes, this seems to me like sleep-talking rather than drugs or drinking as some on the various forums have mentioned. Every once in a while I'll wake up one of my kids and they sound exactly like this for about a minute. I even remember doing this once when my wife came in and started to talk to me. I was reading a book but must have nodded off and she didn't see that I was sleeping. When she said something to me, I said, "Is he still on first base? Where are we going, up to there or up further?" I actually remember all this and I thought I was making sense. I also became very frustrated and just a little angry when my wife started to laugh at me. I couldn't see any reason at all for her to do that.

There is a lot about listening to George that irritates me, but one of the biggest things is that he can't remember what someone said just seconds after they say it. I'm sure you have all noticed times when the guest asked George to repeat the question a caller just asked, usually because the guest couldn't hear or understand the question. George gets this frantic tone to his voice and stutters and then says something that really has no relation at all to what the caller had asked. But the strange thing is that George even does this with questions HE has asked -- he should be able to keep those in his head for a few seconds, shouldn't he? Here's an example from the April 11 show with Jesse Ventura. George essentially interrupts a story Ventura is telling, so Ventura wants to finish with his point. Look at what happens:

George: You started giving tax money back to the citizens, didn't you?

Ventura: Well, I'll explain that, but anyway, I made $120K a year as governor, which if my Roosevelt High School math is correct, that means I made $480K for the four years, which I only spent $300K [on his campaign]. Who else could possibly say that? Now -- where were we going? What did you say until I got that in?

George [Voice raises about three octaves and stutters]: Well, we we we were talking about primarily what was going on in your life at the time as the governor. But I wanted to ask you, why you didn't seek reelection.

This all takes place about 24 minutes into the first hour, by the way.

George does exactly the same thing later on with a question a guest asks. Ventura asks George to repeat the question and George doesn't even come close to the topic that the question dealt with. It is kind of funny when this happens because George always behaves the same way -- he raises his voice by several octaves, you can hear him tense up (probably because he knows about 3 million people are going to realize he's a numb-nuts), he stutters, and he says, "basically" or "primarily" to indicate that he's going to summarize or paraphrase the caller's question. The problem is, as I have said, that he rarely comes close to what the caller originally asked.

Hell, I can understand this happening once in a while. There are times when things leave my head almost as soon as they come in! A similar situation happened on one of Ian's shows a while back -- sorry, I don't recall which one it was -- and Ian simply said, "Duh, ya know what? I don't even remember. Maybe it will come back to me." I don't think there is anything wrong with handling things in this way. If you don't remember, just say you don't remember! The thing that is most disturbing about George is that he almost never remembers the original question or topic. So, for every 20 times a guest asks George to repeat something, George may get it right one time. The other 19 times are more like the example I gave here. Shouldn't this statistic be reversed? Shouldn't George flub it once and get it right 19 times? Isn't that what one would expect from a highly-paid host of an (inter)national radio show?   

With regard to non-compete clauses in radio contracts, I'm no expert. But I certainly have heard radio personalities on one program or station on a Friday and then on a different program or station the following Monday. It happens all the time. I don't know that it is even standard practice to have non-compete clauses in radio contracts or other entertainment-oriented contracts. In some cases, I can see where a company or an owner might remove an on-air personality and keep on paying him or her until that person's contract was set to expire -- then one wouldn't expect to hear that personality back on the air until the contract expired. Someone mentioned Conan -- am I remembering correctly that the time he would be off the air was determined during negotiations after NBC had already decided to bring Leno back? I thought he still had quite a bit of time left on his contract with NBC and they let him out of it early in return for some concessions from him -- like he wouldn't bad-mouth them anymore and he would wait for a certain amount of time before starting a new show on another network. NBC could have kept on paying him, even though he would no longer be the host of the Tonight Show, and he wouldn't have been able to go to another network.

I don't know when Art's contract was set to expire. I think someone mentioned it earlier in this thread, but I'm too lazy to go look it up right now. Maybe someone who posts in this forum and is also involved in radio will know if non-compete clauses are standard in radio. If they are, how do so many hosts manage to play musical chairs with radio programs?

Quote from: From Somewhere Out There on January 16, 2011, 11:23:42 AM
Funny, how this is the usual sentiment after a catastrophe occurs.

Don't know much about that. I do know that, while a catastrophe would still have taken place, the loss of life would have been reduced -- probably sharply reduced. Just like I know that the places that have the most restrictive gun laws tend to have the highest crime rates, the highest violent crime rates, and the highest violent crime rates in which firearms are used.   

If that freak show Loughner would have tried that in my area of Minnesota/North Dakota, he would have lasted about 5 seconds. If he was lucky. Certainly long enough to do some major devastation, but not long enough to kill and injure nearly as many people as he did.

I'm not a pro-gun fanatic by any stretch of the imagination, but for my part, I wish EVERYONE in the crowd going to that event in Tucson would have been armed!

Quote from: HAL 9000 on January 07, 2011, 03:56:45 AM
Children International

What Snoory, or the president of the charity won't tell you is:

The charity spends nearly 20% of it's donations on administrative costs.

Chief Executive : James R. Cook, President and CEO Salary Compensation: $453,998/year (as of 2009)

They are actively seeking employees to raise donations - the more you raise, the more you get paid.

If this is the case, I wonder how much George earns from promoting this organization on the C2C website. He makes his pitch to contribute seem all warmth and hugs, but if he earns money from this, he becomes lower than pond scum in my book. (That's even worse than being one of the worst on-air interviewers in history.) I have nothing against people earning money -- even for promoting charities -- as long as they disclose what they are doing. I'm not saying that George DOES earn money from this, but the last line in the previous post makes me wonder...

My favorite Art Bell memory comes from back in 1997. My wife and I lived in Vegas -- actually Green Valley/Henderson -- and we had been out to eat that night and then briefly visited a local bar where we had a couple of drinks and scored a joint from a friend that we were going to smoke when we got home. We pulled into the driveway at 10, just when Dreamland was coming on. It was a beautiful night and that music that signaled the start of Dreamland, and then Art's voice announcing the topic -- I think it had something to do with ghosts -- filled me with a pleasant anticipation for what I thought was going to be both a fun and interesting night. And it was just that.

Can you imagine having that same kind of anticipation with George? 

I don't think Art's politics are confused -- he's just a libertarian in the most accurate definition of the term. Few dyed-in-the-wool conservatives would argue for weed decriminalization, for example, but Art does. And he was steadfastly against the latest Iraq war, even when many Republicans and quite a few Democrats were all for it. Like more and more people these days, Art seems to focus carefully on issues one by one rather than adopting a particular party platform. At one time I might have classified him as a fairly conservative Republican who disagreed on a few issues. Now, however, he disagrees so much with *both* liberal and conservative agendas that I really do accept him as a true libertarian. This might make him look politically schozophrenic, but only if you absolutely accept a two-party system, with no exceptions. 

I don't have any suggestions for women hosts, but I agree with you. I thought Barbara Simpson was very good and Rolleye James was excellent. She was maybe a step behind Art, but then again, for me, *everyone* is a step behind Art. Rolleye was always engaged in a true conversation and she brought out the best from her guests. She was intelligent in the same way that Ian is intelligent and I wish she had gotten the show instead of George. I was never sure why she left -- I may have missed something -- so I don't know if it was because she had other opportunities or if the powers that be let her go. In any case, I wish she was still there.

Quote from: EgoFartSnooryBoy on July 15, 2010, 05:20:10 AM
Does anyone else notice georges inability to come up with any interesting questions?? Most of the time when a guest stops talking and tries to pass the conversation over George says "How can we...AUDIBLE PAUSE WHILE HE THINKS OF A QUESTION" or " what if...." or "let's take some calls"

I have noticed this, too. I believe George has a set of general questions that he asks, one by one, as the interview progresses. That's why you hear him move from topic to topic -- he is just reading through his pre-determined questions. Art, Ian, and Knapp are able to follow a conversation thread in a way that allows them to generate questions on the fly, just as you and I do when we talk to our friends and family. That's why you hear Art sort of "flowing" with the conversation -- he asks genuine questions based upon what the guest says. If this leads into an area that requires more questions, Art asks them. George just can't do this. My greatest criticism of George is that his guests will sometimes get into VERY interesting areas that the listener knows should be explored. Just at the penultimate moment, George says, "OK, tell us where we can get your book." I cringe when I think of how many times this has happened. So, instead of moving into a topic that the audience would enjoy hearing about, George takes the conversation into an area that is not productive.

It's kind of like when I have a conversation with my wife about her day. Sure, I have a few pre-determined questions like, "How did your day go?" or "Who did you have lunch with?" or "Did you get any big clients today?" But I don't rely only on these questions. If she tells me that she had lunch with the president of some company, I'll ask what it is that company does and what she hopes to do for them. I'll ask other questions based on what she says to me until the conversation naturally flows into something else. Again, we all do something similar to this every day. But George can't do it to save his life, poor man. If I was George, my wife would tell me who she had lunch with and what that person's company does and then I'd say, "So, what did you get at the store today?" never to return to the discussion about the company. I'd never have a chance to learn that she was very close to selling them a $2M advertising/marketing/PR contract. In other words, I'd miss the real "meat" of the conversation -- I'd miss the most important part because I had my pre-determined questions that I had to ask. And my wife would probably look at me like I had just grown a second head -- exactly how I look at the radio every time George does this! I dislike George as an interviewer because I consistently feel like the most important stuff the guest had to tell us was never discussed.

I believe that George relies on Fast Blast for most of his questions. That is part of the reason that you hear him hem and haw and string a question out interminably -- he's actually trying to scroll through his Fast Blasts to find a question that someone sent in. He saw it scroll by a few minutes ago and he remembers part of it, but not all. So he starts out with what he remembers while he is desperately trying to find what it is the Fast Blast question asked.

The upshot is that George is just a dismal interviewer. If I was having a real-life, in-person conversation with him, I would feel compelled to reach out and slap him in the face to try to get his attention. I wish we had a "Fast Slap" that would allow us to do this remotely. That's what he needs.

George, from 07/06/2010 26:42 Hour Three of “Puzzling Paranormal Cases” with Stphen E. Braude:

"And Stephen, you know, whether it is, uh, telepathy, life after death, whatever the belief system might be, remote viewing, it still convinces you that there’s something out there in this universe or multiverses that is unusual, that we truly can’t explain yet, and, that it is all I think directly tied in with each other."

I think I can understand what he's saying and it may make some sense, though I don't know if all paranormal stuff is "tied in with each other" or not. I guess what I didn't like was this inelegant way of saying something that isn't particularly difficult...

     

Quote from: KnyeGuy on July 13, 2010, 06:24:46 PM
I agree about the cringe factor from George's  reply of "exactly."
I mean WTF? He could've cracked a joke about it and just mentioned that he'd find out what the hell was goin on with Ian. I think George simply stifles up when presented with anything that is not scripted.
No wonder he shifted the show from unscreened calls to perfectly filtered dumbass sycophants calling in.
Play it safe Georgie boy...play it safe.
Somebody give this guy a bloody morning show where he can dispense the cute and digestible news/traffic in some local market.

To be honest, I don't think George even realized what was going on. He has said "Exactly" at so many inappropriate times with so many different guests that his response really didn't surprise me. It just seemed like one more of his pointless, "Indeed, indeed" or "Absolutely" beginnings or endings that it was classic George for me.

On another note, I think Ian was asleep. I know he insists that he was wide awake and aware, but he acted just like my kids do once in a while when they fall asleep in the afternoon after they have had an especially busy day. This happens most frequently with my oldest boy who is 12. I'll wake him up so he can eat dinner and he'll try to start a conversation with me. Just a couple of weeks ago this happened and he said, "Who's on first base?" He went on to string together some pretty much random words and phrases, just as Ian did. He even slurred his speech like Ian. There have been times that my son will actually go on like this for two or three minutes. One time I woke him up by pulling on his arm and talking loudly to him and you could see him jerk into wakefulness, just as if he had been sleepwalking, which, since he was standing up, I guess he was. As soon as he is fully awake, he is fine. This also happens with my other kids who are a little younger, but not quite as often.

Given Ian's problem with sleeping, it wouldn't surprise me if he unknowingly slipped into that netherworld not-quite-awake/not-quite-asleep stage. I'm sure he *thought* he was awake/aware, but he obviously wasn't. When Tommy immediately called him, that was enough to snap him back to full consciousness without him even being aware that he had been out of it. If Ian's tinnitus is bad enough that it is causing him to lose sleep, it is probably pretty bad. And I have a feeling it may be a little worse than Ian says it is... Plus, he said he has always had a bit of a hard time getting to sleep and sleeping soundly, so this was just his body taking over and putting him out for a few seconds.

I'm certainly no M.D. so I don't claim to be making any kind of diagnosis here, but this is just what it seemed like to me. Do any of you all have kids who have done this?

I'm sorry -- I actually had to pick myself up off the floor after laughing so hysterically at that one that I couldn't move my legs! I still have tears coming out of my eyes. I think it's because, even though I didn't hear the show, I could hear George's serious but excited tone as he asked that question.

Quote from: Marc Knight on March 24, 2010, 09:04:29 AM
The pro-pot lobbyists have been very efficient at promoting the myth that pot is completely harmless and even "beneficial" both to the individual and to society as a whole.  It is ravaging society.  Of course, pot users have their judgement impaired, so they will not or cannot look at the issue objectively.  A cursory internet review, or better yet, visiting re-hab centers and child welfare organizations, personally, will be an eye opener. 

I do not doubt that most people can "handle" their use of pot, both in consumption and acquisition.  But, if legalized, perhaps millions more will join the stoner realm.  Do we really want that? 

Go ahead - legalize it, but allow for some serious jail time and other punishment if kids are subjected to breathing it.

I understand that there are going to be differences of opinion about this issue, and I certainly respect yours, Marc. I do, though, disagree with your statement regarding rehab centers. I was "lucky" enough in my younger years to be madly in love with two different women -- both of whom were addicts -- one to alcohol and coke and one to alcohol and anything else she could stick down her throat or into her veins. As someone who cared very much for both of these women, I was very involved in their treatment at various rehab centers and frequently went for support meetings. One went through rehab twice before it "took"; the other went through once and never cared enough about any of it to go back to rehab after that first time didn't work. She's dead now; my understanding is that she literally drank herself into oblivion. I don't know first-hand, only through things I have heard through the grapevine. As much as I loved her, we parted ways when she started to shit the bed because she was so drunk and wasted on quaaludes.

That's neither here nor there, really. What matters is that in all the times I went to support meetings at those rehab centers, I *never* encountered anyone who was there for weed. I saw people who were addicted to prescription drugs, coke (we didn't have crack then), heroin, and there were even a couple of young huffers who had fried their brains and were put into rehab by the court system. And, of course, the most common addicts of all were the many, many alcoholics. In addition, I regularly attended support groups for families of addicts including those sponsored by Al-Anon and Narc-Anon. In all the family discussions about the horrible experiences we had had as people who loved addicts, I never heard a horror story about weed. Not one. Neither did I ever hear a story about the horrible effects of weed in all the direct support groups with the addicts themselves.

My experience is why I find your statement about pot "ravaging society" so curious when it is combined with your picture of rehab centers as places that must now be filled with people who are there to fight their weed addictions. Things must really have changed during the past 20 years! As someone who lives in the upper-Midwest where things are pretty calm (our news stories tend toward a cow who disturbs the neighbors because it moos too loudly at night rather than the six or eight or ten stories about murders and rapes that I hear in the first 10 minutes of a news broadcast when I visit many other areas of the country) so maybe we are just missing out on this social scourge. I hear lots in the news here about meth labs and terrible accidents caused by alcohol, but I just don't hear much of anything about weed. So, like I said, if weed is a scourge on society, we must be missing it here.       

Quote from: Marc Knight on March 23, 2010, 08:35:45 PM

Pot head parents smoke wherever they like, including next to their innocent children.  Literally thousands of children are exposed to that drug in Vermont alone, every day.  It is permanently brain altering (as many long-term studies have proven) and has a more insidious effect: social de-integration.  Many adults tend to become seriously psychologically dependent on pot, and instead of buying food and clothing for themselves or their children, they spend most of their money at the local drug dealer buffet.  Inevitably, the family structure falls apart as every resource has to be devoted to attain that elusive, coveted, little baggy of pot.

Marijuana sucks.

I know that weed is more expensive than it was in the 70's or 80's -- probably because it is higher quality -- but I have never heard of potheads who actually would buy weed instead of food for their kids. This sounds like the movies I have seen about heroin or crack addicts, people who have lives that are completely driven by their need for the drug. I could only imagine a movie like this about pot would have to be a black comedy. But yes, if all this is true and we have lots of parents who let their lives, and the lives of their kids, fall apart because they smoke weed, that's all the more reason to legalize it. If folks can grow their own, the expense becomes pretty much a non-issue. Then at least all those parents who are starving their children so they can buy weed will be able to start buying food for their kids.

I guess I am just behind the times because I have never heard of any of this before. I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that there are legions of parents who are clothing their kids in gunny sacks and starving them because of their desperate need for pot. I have seen the horrors that alcoholism can have on families and I could definitely imagine parents who lose their jobs because of that, thus making it difficult to support their families, but I'm having a hard time seeing weed in this context. I have known people who have smoked weed for 40 years and virtually every one of them is responsible (in fact, all of them are quite successful), hold great jobs, have loving families, and are respected within their communities. The only reason any of them would NOT be respected in their communities would be if they were busted and their marijuana habits were exposed. Not because they got in a car while they were drunk and killed a family of four, but simply because they *used* weed. And, even after 40 years of recreational use, not one of these people display any hint that they are psychotic. Of course, this is anecdotal and certainly not indicative of any larger trends, it's just that I'm having a really hard time getting my head around the supposed social and personal dangers of smoking weed.   

Yep -- legalize it. Tax it and/or let people grow their own.

I like Howard Bloom.

Quote from: Pseudonaut on March 19, 2010, 10:23:06 PM
That's really strange. The Census has specifically said over and over that (for the first time in decades) there will be no long form this time around. Check out this wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_Census#Major_changes

Even the 2010 Census website says that the Census is only 10 questions. It has no mention of any long form. Here's another link that backs that up: http://www.prb.org/Articles/2009/changesin2010.aspx

Did you maybe get the American Community Survey? I'm thinking that must be the case.

Yep -- that's what we got. It is administered by the U.S. Census Bureau so my wife and I just assumed we had somehow "lucked" into the long form since it had all the warnings that we MUST fill the thing out and mail it in to the Census Bureau. Apparently we STILL have to fill out the normal form in addition to this mammoth book because we just got that one in the mail.

Quote from: exC2Cfan on March 18, 2010, 09:44:24 PM
You are all insane, uneducated, hate-filled children.

Stupid too, because you don't even understand that even if Obama had been born outside the USA (which he wasn't), it wouldn't matter because his mother was an American citizen. Because of this, he would automatically be an American citizen too no matter where he was born and no matter what his father's citizenship was. Two of my kids were born outside of the USA, and they are American citizens.

P.S.: People who graduated from high school spell the word this way: "ineligible".

I'll accept the insane and hate-filled part, but I draw the line at uneducated! Things are a bit more involved for citizenship regarding potential presidents than it is for the rest of us. The 14th Amendment requirement is that a president must be a "natural born" citizen, and that requires that the child's father must at one time have been a legal resident of the U.S. (I know, it sounds sexist, but there it is...) There are lots of other ins and outs because statute law since the late 18th century has muddied the waters quite a lot. I remember researching this for a high school research paper on Chester A. Arthur who had similar problems to those Obama faces. I don't care all that much about this one way or the other, but did want to chime in by saying that this topic is a good deal more complicated than lots of folks realize.

Quote from: MV on March 18, 2010, 11:32:56 PM
agreed.  that's why i think we should perhaps refrain from destroying western economies based on information that seems inherently to lack objectivity.

Unfortunately, Michael, I think most of the destruction of western economies has already taken place. What used to be called the "middle class" has, for the past year-and-a-half been squeezed like a sponge to provide capital for big banks, insurance companies, financial firms (except for Lehman Bros.), auto companies, and other large corporations. The so-called cap and trade will merely extend that operation.

I have no idea how we became so lucky to get this big book to fill out. But it did come before most others got the shorter form -- like a month-and-a-half ago. It took forever to fill out. We had to gather up a bunch of documents like our tax return from last year and stuff like that. I remember my wife asking me for our mortgage docs and insurance statements. It arrived at a time when I was swamped with work so I was fortunate that my wife wasn't quite as busy and could do the bulk of it.

We got the long form and it does ask that -- and just about everything short of what color my latest bowel... well, nevermind -- I just went and checked and it asked that too! What a pain in the ass that was. I started to fill it out and then asked my wife if she'd just finish it; it was like 28 pages long. Plus on the front cover it said something like, "This fucking form is REQUIRED, numbnuts, so don't even THINK about not returning it. If you don't fill it out, we are going to come to your house and dip you in hot oil and THEN we'll make you fill it out before we kill you." Or something like that... I forgot the exact wording, but this is the gist of it.

Art will frequently call people to task when their predictions didn't pan out, though he does his fair share of letting things slide. You are right about GN -- he rarely if ever asks his guests about failed predictions from earlier shows. I think that's because he does not remember much of anything from one guest appearance to another. He's just trying to get through each show with as little dead air as possible so nothing really gets into his memory banks to begin with. And I doubt that he or anyone else on the staff takes notes about things guests say or predictions they make.

I have been listening to Celente on C2C for some time with great interest. Based on his predictions, and, of course, the predictions of other financial types who visit C2C, I took nearly all of my retirement funds out of equities and real estate funds in April, 2008 and placed them into TIPS, treasuries, and the money market, and a sizable chunk into gold and silver -- something I had never before done. I estimate that C2C saved me from at least a $200K loss (on paper of course) during the 2008 meltdown that really picked up steam in September, 08. The investments in bonds and the money market didn't make anything, but at least I didn't lose. (Well, bonds lost a little -- about 2%) The investment in metals though -- Wow! That investment alone made over $50K. So, counting what I didn't lose in equities/real estate and what I made in metals, I'm good to the tune of at least $250K.

Of course, if I had told any of my friends or colleagues that I made financial decisions based on C2C, they'd laugh me out of the room. They'd do that even if their portfolios were down by 40% while mine was up. I do know enough to not take everything I hear on C2C as gospel, but when virtually ALL of the financial experts are talking about the same things, and then I go to the morningstar or bogelhead forums and see experts talking about the same kinds of things (though they aren't nearly as alarmist), something begins to click in my head. So, whether Celente is a right wing nut or what, I don't care. He -- and the other financial guests on C2C saved my ass in 2008.

I went to the C2C Streamlink archives to get some dates for Celente; look at this description of the forecast that he gave on January 1, 2008:

"Kicking off the New Year, Ian Punnett hosted Coast to Coast AM's annual prediction show featuring psychics and prognosticators sharing what they see coming in the year 2008. In order of the guests' appearances, here are some of the highlights: Trendcaster Gerald Celente: 2008 will bring an "economic 9-11" in which big financial firms are going to collapse from the top down. As greed and corruption are seeped out, there will be great opportunities for entrepreneurs to move into the failing system. With the rise in food prices and property taxes, people can no longer afford things, and will revolt against the current tax system..."

I mean, call him what you will, but how many people went on MSNBC or Fox Business or just about anywhere else except a few of the financial forums and said ANYTHING like this? Which is exactly why virtually everyone I know except for me saw their retirement portfolios decline by 30% to 40%... If it takes these folks 5 or 6 years to get back to where they were in 2008 -- JUST to get back to where they were -- they'll be very fortunate. I, on the other hand, not only made a little in '08, I have been able to use that money that I would otherwise have lost (on paper) to continue investing. So, even if my friends get back to where they were in 5 years, I'll still be light years ahead of them. And this is almost entirely because of people like Celente and others who go on C2C. 

Lots of affiliates carry C2C live. I used to listen using KOGO inSan Diego -- it still has a live broadcast of C2C. They have a big "Listen Live" button toward the upper left on the homepage.

I agree about Barbara Simpson -- didn't she used to be a regular host on Saturday or Sunday nights years ago?

I'll add one more thing about why GN is such a poor host:

I was listening to Art on Michael's streaming shoutcast the other day and Art was talking about one of his (many) impending retirements. One of the reasons he gave, and I'll paraphrase here, is that to do the show right 5 or 6 nights a week -- to do it the way it should be done -- the host has to practically eat/breathe nothing but C2C. That included reading some of the guest's written work, conducting pre-interviews, and engaging in research related to the guest's topic. The reason Art could engage in such interesting CONVERSATIONS is because he knew something about each guest and the topic the guest would discuss.

I am sure that George pretty much goes into each show cold. GN has such hubris that he believes he doesn't have to prepare for a show beyond reading the guest's bio. From what I have heard of his interviews, GN reads one book written by a guest for every 40 shows he does. When he HAS actually read a guest's book, his interviews are somewhat better, as one would expect, though still not up to par with Art's. Why not? Because he is so unused to being engaged in a conversation that he doesn't quite know how to pull that off, even when he is fairly well prepared.

I believe that Art invested quite a lot into each show and that's one of the reasons he was so very good. Ian is even more prepared than Art was, though he has readily admitted on the air that he usually has to prepare for only one show each week, so it is much easier for him than for other hosts. I think the same is true for George Knapp, though as a long-time TV news guy, he is quite used to conducting research and preparing for all of his appearances. (I lived in Vegas for quite a while so had a chance to see him pretty regularly.)     

Still, this is no excuse for George. He is the one who wanted C2C and he is the one making somewhere in the range of $350K in salary. Anyone who is going to host C2C should expect this level of preparation -- anything less is simply cheating the audience. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if Art, Ian, George Knapp, or any of GN's current producers read this, they'll know that what I have just written is true. They'll never acknowledge this, but they know it is true...

I guess the best way to respond to the OP is to ask if he or she has listened to late night radio in general -- a good deal of it is extremely boring, at least for me. There are tons of political shows that re-discuss the same things that were discussed on talk radio shows during the day. Then there are sports shows. And the home fix-it shows. And toward morning there are a couple of auto problem shows. Oh, and lets not forget the popular financial self-help shows or the psychology self-help shows. I will absolutely grant you that some local markets have very interesting shows, but not much in my particular area.

So, C2C is pretty much the only game in town if you like radio that focuses on topics that are off-the-beaten path. As poor a host as I believe George is, some of the guests are very good. I listen to the show because I have an interest in some of the topics that are covered. It's kind of like when I used to religiously watch the McGlaughlin Group on public TV -- I loved the show, but I didn't really like John McGlaughlin (for various reasons that I won't go into here.) But I very much enjoyed hearing what the rest of the panel had to say. Would it have been a better show with a different host? IMO, yes, but I still watched despite not liking the host.

To answer your question in another way, let me also say that there is something perverse about listening to George conduct a C2C interview. So, why listen, you ask? Well, because I believe Edgar Allan Poe was entirely correct when he said that humans are drawn to perversity in -- well, in a perverse way. Humans sometimes do bad things that they shouldn't and that they know are wrong because they *have* to, because they are drawn to perversity. It's like when you drive by a bad car accident and you know you shouldn't look and you don't want to look but you do anyway. And later you are sorry you did. This is the best reason I can give for listening to GN on Coast to Coast.

There is something to be said about listening to a GN interview of someone who could, in other circumstances, be a very interesting guest. It is like the radio version of a train wreck (sorry MV) or the auto accident mentioned above. And when you see (listen to) something like that, you naturally want to TALK about it so you can get it off your chest. This is the place to come because you will find someone else who was struck by exactly the same bit of monstrosity courtesy of GN as you were...

I think many of us also harbor a secret hope that someone -- SOMEONE -- ANYONE at C2C or Premiere actually reads some of the material at this forum because, believe it or not, there is more than a grain of constructive criticism here. I'll give you an example: Back when I first joined this group, I wrote a long description about why I disliked GN as a host and why I was unhappy with the direction C2C had taken. In that post, I discussed how upsetting it was that a guest would so often be going in a *very* interesting direction only to be brought up short by the break. OK, so it's radio, I have to expect that. So GN would say, "Guest, guest, we'll have to hold it right there and come back to this after the break." Then we'd have the break and C2C would come back and GN would ask some completely unrelated question, never to return to the topic that was so interesting at the break. This made me want to scream for obvious reasons, and this is obviously one of the marks of a very bad host. It's like watching a really great movie and then you are brought up short because the DVR cut off the last ten minutes! After I made that post, George pretty much stopped doing that. With rare exception, GN now returns to the topic if he promises to do so before the break. Now, did that stop because Tommy or someone at Premiere read my post? I doubt it; I hope the producers were smart enough to already be on this because, after all, it should have come to their notice since it happened so frequently.

Finally, I think some of us come here because we have come to regard C2C in many ways as OUR show. I began listening to Art many years ago when I lived in Vegas -- back when he was doing political talk. I was there as the show transformed into what it was for so many years with Art at the helm. A good many of the folks who comprised the audience for that show have long since given up, but a few of us hang on. For the most part, though, George's audience is different than Art's was, though demographics may not have changed all that much. (I have no idea one way or the other.) This is something you can't get at by analyzing demographics, though -- you can only get a handle on it by listening to callers. Many here know exactly what I mean. For those of us long-timers, I guess there is a part of us that has a hard time letting go, even though we know we should. For my part, I have solved that by only listening to the podcasts. This lets me get rid of the commercials and the bumper music (I know, I know, *everyone* likes the bumper music, except me, I guess. I just don't like hearing the same 25 songs played night after night for ten years!) It also lets me skip sections of the show that don't interest me. And, most importantly, it allows me to fast forward during times that George is particularly bad.

So, there are lots of very good reasons for listening to the show and then coming here to bitch about it. I think most of it is pretty much human nature -- nothing here that people don't do in just about every other aspect of their lives!

Sorry -- don't know anything about this. If I was going to grow some kind of grass, wheat is not the type I would choose...