Art Bell Quits Dark Matter

[Falkie2013]

That's what I think is going on. SiriusXm has been seemingly quick to respond to all his other requests... why would this be any different? If we don't hear back by the end of business Monday, we won't hear back at all and Art is being ignored. I'm not getting a good feeling about this... I think we've heard the last episode of Dark Matter.... for at least two years.

No one but me has thought of this but ... Monday IS a Federal holiday. The city of Washington shuts down then. I know. I lived there for 6 years.
And few go to work on a Monday which follows a weekend.
Therefore there might be no decision until Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday, even though Sirius is a private company many of its employees may well take a 3 or a 4 day weekend.
I was typing this as Producer Paul came up with the same idea.
He's always on the ball, that guy.
Kudos to him.

[Falkie2013]

"Somewhere in Time" being available free over the broadcast airwaves hurt Art get Sirius subscribers a lot. Many potential listeners decided just to listen to it rather than pay to hear Art. I think Art knew this would happen and it is one reason he asked for Premiere to cancel the show. Premiere also knew it would hurt Art and help Noory's show indirectly, that is why they keep it on. It's all very calculated, shrewd, and Machiavellian but it worked for Premiere.

Nowhere In Time.

10 years of Noory shows.

[FallenSeraph]

"Somewhere in Time" being available free over the broadcast airwaves hurt Art get Sirius subscribers a lot. Many potential listeners decided just to listen to it rather than pay to hear Art. I think Art knew this would happen and it is one reason he asked for Premiere to cancel the show. Premiere also knew it would hurt Art and help Noory's show indirectly, that is why they keep it on. It's all very calculated, shrewd, and Machiavellian but it worked for Premiere.

Sucks b/c you would hope people might hear and like the (free) old stuff and want to check out the new stuff. But these days, people are so broke and bombarded w/free stimuli anyway, many of them don't care that much. They'll take whatever's handed to them.

[Falkie2013]

People who say they prefer Noory to Art even old Art would eat a shit sandwich if it were handed to them.
Low information listeners.

[Zack]

I am STILL seeing nothing from  10pm to midnight on the nightly schedules http://www.siriusxm.com/siriusxmstarstoo/weeklyschedule

Not on the Indie 104 webpage, but here: http://www.siriusxm.com/programschedules it says Jay Thomas at 9 central.

[TheGrimCreeper1]

Not sure why almost everyone is piling on Sirius XM. They provided Art with the vehicle to return to radio. It was Art who chose to back out of his contract -- whether rightly or wrongly. They fulfilled their obligation -- Art did not.

Let's look at it another way. For those of you who have ever had a date stand you up: Are you more or less likely to jump right in and make plans with that person again?

[sherry440]

I find it funny that Art has now decided running a free stream from a website is the way to go. Couldn't he have done this all along? It's also a mystery to me that with all of these "ongoing issues" since the start of the show, he allowed the thirty day opt out to expire. I am guessing the opt out is there so either party can terminate without penalty and makes the entirety of the contract null and void. In the end, I believe the numbers were bad. Very bad. And that probably means a bubble has been created by his hardcore fans, the ones who were willing to pay a premium to hear him broadcast. There wasn't enough to differentiate Art's pay for product from the free product for the casual listener. In other words, to the casual listener, paranormal radio is paranormal radio. Their thoughts are, "I can hear about bigfoot and portals for free and this company wants me to by a subscription to hear about it. Not happening." Faced with this, I think Art simply gave up. It's a lot of work, I'm sure, to build a radio show form scratch, especially on a format where you're asking people to pay for what they believe they can readily have free. I think over time, Art has made himself irrelevant, mostly due to his past actions. For every act of quitting, or other perceived slights to his listeners, more moved on. I believe what we've witnessed this week is mere sophistry from Art, designed mostly to save face and shift the burden from himself to Sirius.

Yes, exactly. Sirius' answer is "Art decided to walk away, not us." They've given their answer.
Secondly, if it is ratings that is the concern, you don't make that judgment in 6 weeks. That's ridiculous. You can't make career or programming judgments on 6 weeks of sales on CCrane or listenership. With any new endeavor, the statistic peeps know there's a big jump at the start, then a downturn, then a slower rise to level off. Predictable graph line. I'm still disheartened and angry. I expected better.

[Sardondi]

...This sounds so complacent.  No mention of hiring an attorney to fight such an unfair non-compete clause.  I do think the movie clip posted here where the guy tells Jennifer Anniston he's just not going to work anymore is the synopsis for this whole mess.  I'll resist spelling out my feelings about the game-playing I believe to be taking place.  Don't want to get sued....

"Unfair non-compete clause". In what universe? It sure wasn't this one.

Please understand: Art was a grown man negotiating a deal at arm's length. He made the deal; it's what he wanted. Had he not wanted it, or had he thought a non-compete was unfair, the two parties wouldn't have come to an agreement. It's as simple as that. That's why concepts such as "unfair non-compete clause" are just meaningless. You can say the deal was stupid, childish, nonsensical - and all those may have been true. But one thing the deal was not, was unfair.

I've said before: at some point you just can't save some people from themselves.

...Secondly, if it is ratings that is the concern, you don't make that judgment in 6 weeks. That's ridiculous. You can't make career or programming judgments on 6 weeks of sales on CCrane or listenership. With any new endeavor, the statistic peeps know there's a big jump at the start, then a downturn, then a slower rise to level off. Predictable graph line....

Exactly. This is why I'm so dumbfounded by Art's actions: he's been IMO incredibly impulsive and rash, almost childish. But it's Art's M.O.:- retire, come back; retire, come back; retire, come back. (There may have been another retire-come back in there, I forget.) Hell, how could Sirius - or any broadcast company - feel good about making a deal with Art now? He's shown that, unlike most 70 year-olds, he's immature, unreliable and almost given to acting out almost self-destructive impulses.

Look, I'm terribly disappointed by all this. I loved Art's old shows. And although I thought the Sirius deal was stupid from the get-go and would expose him to a miniscule audience at best, I was willing to try it. But it was obvious the fire wasn't there for whatever reason. The guests with few exceptions were mediocre. His Halloween show was almost sad, like it was running on formaldehyde, not blood.

But, dammit, in my life I have to live through the consequences of every single one of my decisions, good or bad. I sure don't have much sympathy for a  septugenarian millionaire who gets 6-weeks into a deal that he himself negotiated and finds out he did a piss-poor job and then wants to run away from it. It's how someone who feels he doesn't have to live with the full consequences of his actions behaves. And when he finds out, well, yeah his actions pretty much do have consequences that must be faced, he regrets what he did and tries to crawfish his way out of the mess he's made. Which is what I see going on now. Well, bite it, Art: it's your own shit sandwich.

[sherry440]

For those of you who didn't have Sirius before Sept. 16, I can assure you that Sirius really backed Art and supported his success. I heard DM ads every 10 minutes throughout July, August, Sept. As I listened to HLN.

[Zack]

For those of you who didn't have Sirius before Sept. 16, I can assure you that Sirius really backed Art and supported his success. I heard DM ads every 10 minutes throughout July, August, Sept. As I listened to HLN.

I also had Sirius for a while.  I heard Dark Matter ads even on the music stations I listen to.  They were still promoting DM even after Art quit. 

[ItsOver]

... Sad. I listened to Somewhere In Time last night and just felt sad.

With the Dark Matter debacle, I can't even listen to the old SIT shows anymore without feeling sad and pissed.  The latest circus has left a bitter taste in my mouth.  This kool-aid really sucks. 

[HaveAccess]

Art...

Fight the damn NC clause...

We have put up with the  fricken Premrat crap...
For 10 years!   
For 10 years!

We paid $15 a month (or very substantially more) to carry the fricken dead weight of SiriusXM programing...
Just to listen to your program only...

And you casually say your not going to fight that clause...
When to this board it looks entirely questionable and dubious and unenforceable?
All for 6 weeks of labor?
2 years of muzzled silence?

I know of this guy. Hes a complete lying idiot.
He says hes got a lawyer out of St Louis....

Fight the damn NC clause, damnit!

Sometimes, in life, youve got to have "huevos"...

[sherry440]

With the Dark Matter debacle, I can't even listen to the old SIT shows anymore without feeling sad and pissed.  The latest circus has left a bitter taste in mouth.  This kool-aid really sucks. 

I'm there with ya. Plus the fact I've memorized all the old shows. Soooo....there's Darkness Radio, Jim Harold, Mystical Universe (?) out of Australia, there's an Englisg guy podcast that's very good....something with a U....

[Falkie2013]

With the Dark Matter debacle, I can't even listen to the old SIT shows anymore without feeling sad and pissed.  The latest circus has left a bitter taste in mouth.  This kool-aid really sucks. 

It's almost like an elphant with the runs decided to walk over and squat on all of us and take a dump.

[sherry440]

Golly Gee, Falkie...is that what it's like? I hadn't thought of it quite that way.

The Unexplained with Howard Hughes! He's good.

[HorrorRetro]

Yes, exactly. Sirius' answer is "Art decided to walk away, not us." They've given their answer.
Secondly, if it is ratings that is the concern, you don't make that judgment in 6 weeks. That's ridiculous. You can't make career or programming judgments on 6 weeks of sales on CCrane or listenership. With any new endeavor, the statistic peeps know there's a big jump at the start, then a downturn, then a slower rise to level off. Predictable graph line. I'm still disheartened and angry. I expected better.

For those of you who didn't have Sirius before Sept. 16, I can assure you that Sirius really backed Art and supported his success. I heard DM ads every 10 minutes throughout July, August, Sept. As I listened to HLN.

True on both accounts.  Yeah, we don't know what went on in the background, but I'm not sure it's even relevant.  We know he agreed to do the show and signed a contract.  Some people -- a few hundred, from Art's own accounting -- had some streaming issues.  C. Crane sales were not what they were expecting.  So instead of sticking around and working on a fix, they decided to chuck it all in the bin.  I just don't understand how these decisions were made on just over 6 weeks of doing the show.  As for any mysterious external forces causing this debacle, I highly doubt it. The best predictor of future behavior is previous behavior.

[McPhallus]

Isn't Monday a federal holiday?
Execs may not work on a holiday.

Just sayin'....

Hate to say it, but I think their decision has already been made, and they're probably on to other things at this point.  I think even Art is starting to realize this.

[HaveAccess]

Sherry...

"theunexplained.tv "   with Howard Hughes   very good program

[Sardondi]

...Fight the damn NC clause...Fight the damn NC clause, damnit!....

How? Based on what? "I was stupid"? "I'm so vain that I thought I was smart enough to negotiate by myself and not hire a lawyer"?  "I'm so mentally incompetent that I should be declared non compos mentis and institutionalized for life"?

Sorry, but regretting the deal you made is never a basis for suit. Neither is "this deal is so stupid that no one else thinks it's fair".

[Sardondi]

Hate to say it, but I think their decision has already been made, and they're probably on to other things at this point.  I think even Art is starting to realize this.

Then came the dawn.

I'm just now realizing that this is the way Art lives his life. He's had a ton of these morning-afters which result from his own uncontrolled impulsiveness.

[sherry440]

Hate to say it, but I think their decision has already been made, and they're probably on to other things at this point.  I think even Art is starting to realize this.

Yep. But does that mean this thread has to end? Boo-Hoo. I enjoy the intellect here, and haven't been on this forum since 2009 .

[ItsOver]

How? Based on what? "I was stupid"? "I'm so vain that I thought I was smart enough to negotiate by myself and not hire a lawyer"?  "I'm so mentally incompetent that I should be declared non compos mentis and institutionalized for life"?

Darn right.  We're not talking about Jorch Noory here.  Hell, not even Noory would have done something like this.  Damn it.

[McPhallus]

Yep. But does that mean this thread has to end? Boo-Hoo. I enjoy the intellect here, and haven't been on this forum since 2009 .

Weren't you one of the very first posters?

I think this thread will somehow go on, regardless of whatever twists and turns lie ahead.

[aldousburbank]

[HaveAccess]

Yeah Sardondi....

I half way agree with you...
Your posts are excellant...

But for Art to say so casually..so casually...say that he will honor a 2 year NC for only 6 weeks of programing...
After our waiting 10 years and our investment...it literally boggles the mind...

And you and I both know that common sense and legal contracts...well....
It largely depends on the quality of your legal counsel....
And whats inside some black box with small print...

[Agent : Orange]

Sherry...

"theunexplained.tv "   with Howard Hughes   very good program

This is my current favorite show in the absence of Dark Matter. The host is really damn good.

I was keeping my fingers crossed that he would either make a weekend host, or if needed, substitute on dark matter. Not that any of that matters now.

[Agent : Orange]

With the Dark Matter debacle, I can't even listen to the old SIT shows anymore without feeling sad and pissed.  The latest circus has left a bitter taste in mouth.  This kool-aid really sucks. 

Sadly, I'm really feeling this too.

[sherry440]

Weren't you one of the very first posters?

I think this thread will somehow go on, regardless of whatever twists and turns lie ahead.

Wow, I don't know if I was...it's possible. I think I remember when MV started up a chat, or changed one and would have wanted to support him. Just so I'm not the last poster! Lots of brilliance here if you can see past the potty talk! Haha

[Elinor]

OK, folks, it may really BE the end of the world. 

ABBA may be getting back together:

http://www.france24.com/en/20131110-abba-mulls-possible-reunion-report

Now I'm starting to get worried . . . .

[onan]

"Annie" (1982) - Tomorrow