Maybe Someone IS Paying Attention...

How ironic that several hours after I posted my screed on George Noory holding spontaneous show planning meetings while on the air, the first "guest" on Coast to Coast that night was former and now re-instated producer, Alan Corbeth. Also ironic is that Noory's fifteen-ish minute on-air chat with Corbeth sounded like a business meeting in and of itself. Not so much the important part of the meeting where things get done. More like the aftermath. The part that comes after The Big Guy, The Fixer, attends the Real Meeting with the worker bees of the staff, discussing all the important issues and strategies for overhauls and forward movement and then bumps into "TheTalent" in the hallway on the way out, exchanging pleasantries, assuring him he's doing a great job and telling him everything's going to be just fine.

The C2C website frequently has up a message to the fans soliciting them for guest ideas and contact information for anyone they think would be a good guest, and there have been a few times when Noory even mentioned it on the air, as well as actively soliciting any random callers that seem to have an interesting story that seems remotely legitimate. For long time Coast fans, I don't need to tell you that when Art Bell ran that show - with the help of producer Lisa Lyon (who is still a producer) and Alan Corbeth, there was never a lack of interesting guests, nor a need for the new, ridiculous & juvenile "Floating Format", which basically means that they're flying by the seats of their pants and will take any guest (often procured at the last minute) that will be on, for whatever length of time they can manage. The current Coast shows also frequently resort to their current stable of "stand by guests", who in essence are just media whores who are happy to be called to talk any old time. Your Richard C. Hoaglands, Stan Deyos, Jerome Corsis, et al.

Part of the reason Art, with the help of Lyon and Corbeth, always had great, interesting, intelligent and unusual guests - guests you'd never heard of before, (As opposed to members of any given Star Trek related show, Gary Busey and Pat Boone - to name a few.) was because Art Bell reads books. Fiction, non-fiction- it matters not. He once said he tries to read a book a day. Mind you, he managed that while doing 5-7 radio shows a week, which he did a great deal of the prep work for, often including contacting the guests and setting up the interviews himself. (I'm pretty sure Noory's "prep work" involves reading all of the Coast fan forums, I've caught him on one five minutes before his show was supposed to start.)

The staff behind Noory is much, much larger than Art Bell's triumvirate, and yet they still seem to be scrambling, and Corbeth did little to dispel that impression, saying of Noory's staff, "They're just in there churning out guests as best they can..." and shortly after that , Noory said,
"Now it's time for us to continue pushing, because I think the insight you've been able to bring now to us from before and basically sitting and listening for four years - you're really gonna help us to continue to cantapult this show beyond anything that's going on in the country."
( Yes, he did say "cantapult", and yes, I did transcribe it exactly the way he said it.)

For a couple of months I've been noticing an increase in negative chatter concerning Noory and his performance on various Coast fan message boards that even allow that sort of thing. More than the usual grumblings and critical observations. Furthermore, the fans who are expressing displeasure have gotten to the breaking point, and are actually organizing to take action and try to do something about it, rather than just bitch. They're calling local radio station programmers, contacting sponsors, contacting various agencies to see the "books" on the show's ratings to see how much smoke is being blown up their asses... they're getting mad as hell and they really not gonna take it anymore.

The natives are restless, and it appears that someone in the Coast to Coast camp has finally taken notice. Enough so that somebody , and by the Noory / Corbeth exchange, it doesn't appear to have been Noory, decided that they needed to pull out The Big Guns and make some serious changes. From Noory's words and inflections, it seems that at least one person on their staff finally said, "Enough is enough - we need help, and we need help bad, and the only guy that's gonna get it done right is Corbeth."

Corbeth stated that his role will only be part time, and from what he said, it appears that he will be in charge of procuring good guests in a timely fashion. Good God let's hope he does. Of course, the best guests in the world can't make a difference if Noory doesn't read their books and understand the subject matter, so we'll see if Corbeth can really work some magic and either convince Noory to actually read a book now & then, rather than skim it for "the meat" , Evelyn Wood-style, as he claims to do. (Everybody who believes that raise your hands...)

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ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

I thought it was funny that Ian Punnett talked in a warm, friendly & comfortable way about Corbeth, even chuckling and calling him "Uncle Alan", but the normally cocky, egotistical Noory was reverent to the point of grovelling. A complete suck-up. He said,
"....I have a special role for you in my heart, because you helped put me where I am today. And the fact that you're gonna be there pushing and carrying us for years to come, and as long as you want, is very important to me."

As a geeky aside, the copy or Corbeth's bio that Noory was given to read as his introduction is here , and if you have Streamlink and are able to listen to the show, you will have a brief example of what I've been trying to tell y'all for years, and that is George is not a good reader, does not have a firm grasp on grammar, and he tries to ad-lib his copy which adds to further mistakes in grammatical continuity.