George Noory Sucks! - The Definitive Compendium

[The Professor]

Oh baby...quick...go back and edit this out...don't invoke those evil entities or... guess what...

Trust Gumby on this one....

You are right Gumby...you are my Jordan Maxwell, I thank you, and I have made the correction, saving all mankind....just as George did when he aborted the Oija board experiment...

[Gumby, Dammit]

Hopefully they'll be able figure out how to create their very own "Tard Talk" thread over at GLP.

[The Professor]

Say it ain't so!

Point taken.

[Gumby, Dammit]

You are right Gumby...you are my Jordan Maxwell, I thank you, and I have made the correction, saving all mankind....just as George did when he aborted the Oija board experiment...

If I'm Jordan Maxwell....

Nevermind...don't look back you can never look back.

[The Professor]

That picture is obviously fake, Gumby---A woman like that is not gonna be dating Noory...

edit: ooops, I forgot, he probably used his demoralization beam to capture her...

[Gumby, Dammit]

That picture is obviously fake, Gumby---A woman like that is not gonna be dating Noory...

You're right...she's after balls.

[Smoky]

hey do any of you guys have the picture of noory jack in the box? It was a jack in the box with noorys head on it...it was hilarious. Another one that I saw once had Art bell holding a puppet that had noorys head on it. I love both those pictures. I laughed for like 17 minutes straight.

[Gumby, Dammit]

hey do any of you guys have the picture of noory jack in the box? It was a jack in the box with noorys head on it...it was hilarious. Another one that I saw once had Art bell holding a puppet that had noorys head on it. I love both those pictures. I laughed for like 17 minutes straight.

I know which ones you're talking about Smoky, but I don't have them...I think they might have been lost in the Big Flush over yonder.

But did you say puppet?

I can help!

[Smoky]

lol!!


twisted

[Gumby, Dammit]

Alright all....

Till next time....

[Gumby, Dammit]

lol!!


twisted

Aint it though? That hillbilly puppet just cracks me the hell up every time too!!!!

He's hillbilly #2 from Deliverance in case anyone was wondering...oh man...George, "you've gotta a right purty mouth!"

[The Professor]

My proof that Remote Viewing is bogus: if they would allow Noory to appear at their annual meeting, it cannot be legitimate.

[Sybil]

Hopefully they'll be able figure out how to create their very own "Tard Talk" thread over at GLP.

[Sybil]

hey do any of you guys have the picture of noory jack in the box? It was a jack in the box with noorys head on it...it was hilarious. Another one that I saw once had Art bell holding a puppet that had noorys head on it. I love both those pictures. I laughed for like 17 minutes straight.

Eevil should have the noory in a box.. I thought I had it but I can't find it. I nooried-up my photo filing system.

[Frys Girl]

I dated that guy!

[11angeleyes11]

I gotcha beat, I dated both of them.  And now I am being asked out by their cousin.  I went out with them on  a rebound.  Good looking men like that are hard to  find.

[Is It EEvil?]

hey do any of you guys have the picture of noory jack in the box? It was a jack in the box with noorys head on it...it was hilarious. Another one that I saw once had Art bell holding a puppet that had noorys head on it. I love both those pictures. I laughed for like 17 minutes straight.

         I have  that one  Smoky...

[Is It EEvil?]

Puppet George

[Frys Girl]

I gotcha beat, I dated both of them.  And now I am being asked out by their cousin.  I went out with them on  a rebound.  Good looking men like that are hard to  find.

lol. you always come in with such good follow up posts.

[Sophie]

Unh Tommy,

haw, George?

I duh no bout teknologee

[Baghdad Bob]

Hi, Prof'. How are youuuu? It indeed seems like the glitches and gremlins come out in full force when George Knapp hosts the show.

Noory Voice: "It's my shill to power."

hi superN...happy to see you

[MV/Liberace!]

About a year and a half ago, someone who used to sit in as a host from time to time on C2C sent an email to a friend of mine.  A LENGTHY email.  During this year and a half, some developments have occurred, some things have been said publicly by this person, and the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, with regard to this person's feelings about George Noory and the state of C2C today.  Therefore, we thought this would be an appropriate time to share it with you.  It's a real gem.

Many apologies for not seeing this sooner-- still recovering from the flu/pneumonia.

I will hold you to your word about not sharing my thoughts-- or at the very least not sharing them unless you run across attribution that doesn't lead back to me.  Too many people inside the industry would know from whence most of this comes.  Not sure how much you know about the inner workings of radio, so if I expound of points obvious to you, forgive me.

Randy Michaels at Jacor wanted a syndication division,  He ultimately bought Premiere, and then in 1998 bought Coast to Coast.    I laughed at the press release with Randy saying he'd been a long time fan of the show.  Randy in 1997 had never heard the show--  I know because we were on the phone while I was driving to LA listening to Art while I was on I-10 in Arizona.   I was telling Randy about "Mel's Hole".  He got excited and said 'let's go find it!'  I had to assure him it was nowhere to be found, this being an Art Bell caller.   He confided that while he'd certaom;u heard of the show, he'd never actually heard it for himself.

So Randy bought the show and put it under the Premiere banner.  I doubt Premiere had a clue about how the show made money.  Let me digress further and say that when Herb Jepko's wildly successful overnight show, "The Nitecaps" was bought by Mutual in 1976; the deal was that Herb would pay the landline cost of transmission from Salt Lake City to the network's DC headquarters and pay the salary of an hourly newsman.  Mutual, for it's part would clear stations and sell time.    Herb was grossing over $2 million before this deal. Within 18 months he was bankrupt.   

Networks sell on a CPM model (cost per thousand listeners) but head count is only viable in the day. Many national advertisers don't want night time inventory for any reason (let alone overnight inventory) and those that do which pay on a CPM basis are paying a fraction of what a daytime spot would cost.  (When hosts spout off ratings, they are talking Shares-- percentage of people listening to the radio while they are on who are listening to them-- so as you can see, a 10 share in morning drive will produce exponentially more listeners than a 10 share at 2 a.m-- many more people listening to the radio at 7 am then the middle of the night.  Hence  advertisers don't care about shares-- they want to know about many Persons they reach.  Further, when hosts spout of numbers of listeners, like millions-- they are talking Cumes-- the cumulative total of people who are listening during a week, as opposed to Average Quarter Hour which is roughly the number of people listening at any given time-- a number exponentially lower than the Cume.   National advertisers buy on Average Quarter Hour Persons because they want to know how many people are available at the minute their message is airing, and AQH Persons is the closest they'll come to assessment,  assuming there's any validity to this rating scheme but I won't belabor that. Nor will I get into demographics, another big factor.)   Mutual using the standard network model of selling time based on CPM produced very little revenue for Herb.

So how did Herb make that $2 million?  On direct response-- concentrating on advertisers who could measure results.  He targeted companies who he believed would be of interest to his audience and when he produced enough revenue to make it worthwhile for them to continue advertising, they did so.  Icy Hot can thank Herb Jepko for their start.  Apart from ads, he had conventions, did tours ('the all riding no walking tour of Hawaii' was my favorite), and had a monthly newsletter "The Wick" and was cleaning up until Mutual came along.  He died a drunk.

Art was a fan of The Nitecaps (it's why he has so many phone numbers for different regions of the country-- that was a Jepko bit I also won't belabor), but he either didn't know the inside story or didn't understand what he was getting into  with the sale to Jacor/Premiere.  The deal couldn't have happened without Art's approval.  I cringed when he put out a press release saying the new owners gave him total programming control.  I was yelling at the radio saying, 'Dope, you need SALES control.'   TRN (Talk Radio Network, which at that point had no other product) understood direct response and they were doing a good job at selling the show.  They took the $9 million they were offered because they realized Art could walk if they didn't.  Bad blood still exists, though TRN has done very well with Savage, Ingraham, et al.  (Let me also say that Direct Response is often these days what PI spots are called-- but PI-- Per Inquiry spots pay radio and television stations or networks based upon the number of responses which is a gamble. I 'm referring to Direct Response advertisers that pay a set rate for spot schedule.)

First thing Premiere does when they got the show was to inform stations they'd be requiring two units of daytime inventory a day in order for them to carry the show.  (This was not an uncommon request back in the days of wired nets.)   The stations, almost en masse, informed them, they could go to hell.   What Premiere was trying to do was to fit Coast to Coast into their CPM model... they knew they couldn't sell overnight CPM and had no idea how to sell Direct Response, and wouldn't want to expend the effort anyway as their mode of operations was so different.   When that failed, they had a problem on their hands.  But not immediately-- a lot of the Direct Response advertisers were loyal to the show, so revenue they didn't solicit continued to come in.

A year or so later, Jacor was bought by Clear Channel. This was actually good for Coast to Coast in the long run financially because Clear Channel could force the stations it owned that were talk formatted to run the show-- and force them to carry that daytime inventory.  Problem solved.   Further, as time progressed, it became the norm of all current syndicators to force clearance of shows that stations might not want in exchange for shows they did want.  --Want Rush Limbaugh in the day? Gotta run Dr. Dean Edell (for many years).  In short order, Rush was so successful they were able to charge cash for the show (only one able to do that currently) in addition to the standard barter arrangement where stations run network spots within the show.  Down the road Premiere was additionally able to force other product on affiliates who wanted Rush.   I can name some eye popping non CC owned call letters (not many but in one case. a huge market) that were told if you want Rush, you'll also carry Coast to Coast, or we'll give Rush to your competition who will carry Coast.    (Today that hijacking scenario is so common among syndicators that it explains how some obviously secondary product winds up on primary radio stations.)  With Coast it's not the norm as there's little competition and many of the affiliates are already owned by Clear Channel, but it's happened.

So what we're seeing happen in his scenario is that the revenue Coast brings comes more from outside the show.  Secondarily there's a small stream from things like the newsletter, streamlink, and amazon products (i.e. the bumpers) on the site.  Nevertheless, the hope is always that the revenue inside the show will be sizable. I doubt Art was thrilled with some of the sponsors they began to amass.  I'm going to skip over his leaving the first time, and the choice of Mike Siegal-- that's another soap opera.  (Let me cut to the chase and say it worked out well for Art--  when he left the first time, the contractual restrictions on him were so severe that I joked he couldn't even appear in a public restroom.  When he came back after Siegel, he made sure those restrictions wouldn't continue to exist should he leave again.)

BUT..  by the time Art left again, I strongly suspect the choice of George (made unilaterally by Kraig Kitchin at Premiere) was based solely on his malleable nature. In George they have everything they want, if their goal is to have someone so grateful for their job that they'll never complain.  He is and he won't.

Who else would read a commercial for The Psychic Pill?!   I'm sure you can point out many examples. 

The downside of possible losing stations is a non factor-- consider the previous info and add that there is no real competition and likely will not be in radio's current incarnation.    The downside side of losing listeners, is virtually unnoticed:

Ego ratings will continue to look great.  The way ratings are currently taken, news/talk stations are favored during late night periods (boring reasons I'll spare you).   Since Coast has no viable competition, it continues to have great ratings.  But remember, those ratings hosts love to cite are Shares-- the percentage of people listening to any station that are listening to them.  If people turn off the radio, it doesn't affect Shares.   It also doesn't affect Share when people listen to non-commercial stations, such as public radio (because ratings are used for sales purposes, they don't factor stations that can't sell-  you can find them if you know how to look, but the publicly stated data doesn't factor them).   

This is actually a not uncommon radio dillemma. I've always said if you don't know why you're winning, you won't know when you lose or what to do about it when you finally do.  Ratings lag performance, and in very successful products. by years.  For instance when I was programming a station in 1979 in Los Angeles, KABC was #1.  I said at the time they were already slipping-- I could feel it. (I was not a direct competitor, I was PD of a music station.)   In 1982, KIIS, a top 40 station became an 'overnight' #1--  overnight my foot.  KABC was probably not in the top 5 in reality by 1980.   The inverse is true too.  By 1987 I knew KFI was gaining great traction, but it wasn't until the '90s that it dominated any demo.

Now that you've waded through all that, you get to the reality--   over the past several years the show has become virtually unlistenable to the bright, hip crowd that Art fostered.  Some have left entirely, some listen with less enthusiasm because there's nothing else.  They're replaced with the brain dead-- those who think George is the ultimate host. (Believe me,they're there-- they complain when anyone exhibits personality, or interjects a comment. And they're cruel.  I can figure out why George Knapp wouldn't want to see Fast Blast.  Unless you've been doing this for decades and nothing bothers you, most of it will shake anyone up.  I found it funny though sad and telling at the same time.)

The behind the scenes people working on the show are emboldened because they're working with George who likely has no say or control over anything-- and theyr'e able to lord over most weekend hosts who are either inexperienced or totally new to radio. They've got producers telling hosts what to do.  (This is completely backward it the real radio world-- producers work for hosts, not the other way around.)  And all have consumed the kool-aid that this is a terrific show with a wonderful living heritage on which they self-righteously expound at the drop of a dime.  It's the blind with an attitude leading the brain dead without a clue.  I strongly doubt anyone in the equation has enough radio savvy to remotely understand that their indicators of success belie the truth, let alone enough insight to know what makes good radio.

I snobbishly say a host better learn how to play records before they play the talk hits--  Art did. Rush did.  Rush's success came not from his politics.  It was phrases like 'feminazi' not what he thought of feminists.  He, in his build up days, was truly an entertainer.   Art had a good deal of that too.  And he we stumbled upon the paranormal genre, it was perfect (actually not a lot different from what Long John Nebel was doing in the '40s and  '50s in New York). 

I suspect unless there is a major change, Coast will continue to devolve with no one there aware.  I also suspect unless there are major changes in radio, there will be nothing that immediately threatens them.  The losers are the listeners, at least those who are not drooling.    The move toward 'conspiracy', to my programming ears, is catastrophic, but the staff embraces it.  True conspiracy fans are so beyond George's questions that it defies elaboration, and those that don't know much about it are less likely to be interested in it.   Producers (I worked with Lisa Lyons and did not enjoy the experience)  also shun many of the paranormal avenues worth exploring.

So why did I ever agree to do the show again?  In small part because I didn't realize how much it had devolved, since i rarely have a chance to listen to it, and in major part because a wonderful friend at Clear Channel corporate asked me to do it because it was his opinion that there was no one on the show with a real radio background.  So I did for awhile.   But it really was a drain, and increasingly I saw no upside given all the above.  On an emotional level, it hurts me to the core that this venue has over 500 stations and programming is either an afterthought of the product of people without the necessary knowledge to make it work.  Probably some of both-- but the combination of expedience and ignorance is likely a symptom of radio today which is why I'm so blessed to be able to do my show on my terms and actually profit from it.  I keep that in mind each time I grouse about having to be responsible for every facet from engineering to sales, but in the end, it's the only way I could possible survive.  Too old and too impatient to actually be in a radio station or syndicator these days.

I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know and more than I should have written. Again I'm trusting you to not make it public.   

I'm at a horrible stage where I'm really no longer to answer most of the emails (I guess I should be glad because it means people listen, but it really does bother me I can't physically answer them all and still do anything.)  I'm still sick and have been lying in bed today, hence the luxury of a response I'll probably never be able to give again any time soon.   Plus it got me to further delay a bunch of projects I'd probably rather not do

[Frys Girl]

were told if you want Rush, you'll also carry Coast to Coast, or we'll give Rush to your competition who will carry Coast.

Jesus Christ. Is this legal? I mean, negotiating contracts is one thing, but this is fucking intimidation! People pay for these licenses. How come they can't be more picky about how they pick their programming? Forget the fucking fairness doctrine - THIS is worse! "You have to broadcast pure ear bleeding crap if you want the top conservative radio host". Jesus.

Thank you for posting this. What an eye opener. I didn't know about the share business as much, but what about PPM? Does PPM factor in the shares in a market?

[ArtBellFan]

Thanks Michael...

[MV/Liberace!]

What an eye opener.

isn't it?

Thanks Michael...

u got it.

[Marc.Knight]

I am sure this commentary is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

[Itty Bit]

hi superN...happy to see you

Hot spit.  I think everyone is here now.  Aren't they?  But if they're not, they should be.  Mostly.  Well, maybe not all of them. 

aka red

[Is It EEvil?]

WTF is wrong with his goddamn hands?

Obviously,  Satan has had a 6th digit surgically removed from between his thumb & index finger (on his front legs)

[Is It EEvil?]

[valdez]

Dude, you're confused. I listened to the show. George lets people have their say, that does not imply agreement. On other occasions he has made his feelings about 9/11 amply clear. I doubt you could follow along with anybody's math.

Yeah, you're right about me and the math.  And I guess George does let people have their...hey, wait a minute, why are you defending GN?  Just what kind of a George Noory Sucks forum is this?