I have nothing personal against George. I don't hate George. He's just not a host that I want to listen to.
There's no one thing or moment that I can point to. It's a lot of things.
First, George's style. The best way I can describe it is like this: Coast to Coast AM hosted by George Noory sounds overly produced. It's a radio show taking place in a studio somewhere with producers and call screeners and all the stuff that comes with being a radio show these days. Whereas Coast to Coast AM hosted by Art Bell...it felt like a rational guy doing something really different and edgy in the overnight hours in a show broadcast from his home with his wife in the next room, his cats at the door, a cigarette in his hand. Listen to George when he signs off the show. He thanks about ten people involved in making the show. But Coast to Coast AM hosted by Art Bell? It was mostly run by one person: Art. He ran the board, he ran his webcam, he punched up the callers, he maintained his equipment. Art's fingerprints were all over the show when he was hosting. Whereas I get the sense that George just shows up an hour before air time, is handed cards for show prep, does the show from a studio, gets in his car, goes home. It's a different style.
I sent Art an e-mail last month thanking him for his work. One of the things I told him was that, as I listened to the classic shows and compared them to current shows by Noory, those Art Bell classics had something truly fun: unpredictability. They were unpredictable. No call screeners. Off-the-cuff conversations. A freedom to abandon a guest and move on to something topical. It was guerrilla radio and that's what made it so exciting. But radio syndicators? Talk radio stations? These days, they don't seem to want unpredictability. They want predictability. They want the same show, every day, no real variations, day in, day out, all variables controlled, no opportunity for something truly spontaneous. That makes it...boring.
That's George Noory to me: Nice guy hosting a boring show.
Beyond that? I felt a general shift in topic tone that I wasn't comfortable with. What I liked about Art was that he had opinions but he was also willing to engage in reason. He'd challenge the callers he didn't agree with, he'd lay out his opinions, but nothing was really off-limits. Whereas I slowly began to detect a subtle repetitive theme in George's shows: his belief in these mysterious "people" controlling us, a distrust of the government that seemed to be supported by nothing substantive, end times, paranoia, they don't want us to know the truth, etc. If George feels paranoia about those things? I respect that. But George never talks about them or backs them up. It's just hot air in an environment where no guest is challenged, positions are taken but not supported, suspicions are aired without substantive discussion...it's all flash but no substance. Say what you will about Art...he had substance. If he believed something, he'd tell you about it, and if he told you about it, he'd tell you why he believed what he believed.
I feel like I know Art Bell on some level because Art would let his guard down. I don't think I know Noory at all because the only Noory I know is the Noory on Coast to Coast, and that Noory is elusive because he's afraid to pin down his beliefs with anything substantive. He's all talk and everybody gets a trophy.
I don't know if that makes sense, but that's my take.
