RADIO WARS
“Drama, drama, DRAMA!” This is the way fans will remember Art Bell kicking off his big, hotly anticipated October 2nd episode of “Midnight In The Desert”. The defacto “King” of late-night radio talk shows wasted no time cutting to the chase. The “new guy”, Leo Ashcraft, was OUT as news producer and provider of key network logistics. Art was sticking with his veteran webmaster Keith Rowland.
As long time listeners had come to expect from Captain Bell, things once again, definitely seemed to be taking a turn for the weird; God only knowing where it all really would lead.
Rather than successfully working together to build a bigger, stronger enterprise, internal conflicts conspired to suddenly bring it all crashing down; spelling the ugly end of yet another short-lived, ill-fated, highly hyped Art Bell talk show project.
So, how did it all manage to come to this? Why did Leo suddenly see the critical need for a major Mexican standoff? According to Ashcraft, his working relationship with Keith Rowland had gone sour; the situation aggravated by a highly public feud and “It’s either him or me” power play ultimatum. Most everyone watching accurately predicted how things would unfold: there was little chance whatsoever Art would demand his wing-man of nearly 25 years quietly step aside.
While usually industry professionals deal with their feuds and disagreements behind the scenes, sometimes the various players prefer to have things dragged through the mud. Full blown madness parading out on display, for the entire world to plainly see in the light of day, Leo wasn’t shy at all about letting his ill-tempered feelings known.
There were a couple key issues Ashcraft complained about most loudly. First, he felt he hadn’t been paid fairly for the work he’d done over the past few months. Second, that Keith was purposely doing everything he could to sabotage the new guy’s attempts to promote the network by winning over a larger number of station affiliates, and expanding the listener fan base.
Active in the radio industry for well over a quarter century, managing even to establish the “Nexus” and “Mutual Broadcast Network”, maybe the self-proclaimed “grumpy engineer” was right? This depends who you ask. Unfortunately for Ashcraft, there was one key category he clearly wasn’t winning in: the court of public opinion.
As if things weren’t already bad enough on the PR front, Leo’s subsequent stream of sadly comical profanity-laced Facebook rants showed he either couldn’t reign in his primitive impulses, or was simply beyond the point of even caring. Other than his official “on air” response, Art never seemed to have mentioned the issue or his former employee’s name again. Meanwhile, Keith, for all intents and purposes, has preferred the strange comfort of an odd lingering silence; presumably seeing it as the best means of preserving his image and legacy.
Over the course of things, reactions among Facebook and social media audiences ranged anywhere from shocked and aghast, to gleefully amused. At the height of the ordeal, when sparks and emotions were most feverish & frenzied, more than a few fans were double dosing on popcorn and coffee. Scouring social media, diehards sat perched on the edge of their soiled sweat-soaked seats as the latest periodic updates regarding Ashcraft’s fiery meltdown trickled on through.
Since, as it turns out, one of his favourite past times is reported to be amateur body-building, some were even suspecting Leo suffering a prolonged case of “roid rage”.
DON’T LEAVE ME THIS WAY
No longer affiliated with “Midnight In The Desert”, or the “Dark Matter” Digital Network, Ashcraft almost immediately initiated a new rival project. Quickly assembling a ragtag team of rookie talent to help promote and steer the show, the “Mutual Broadcast Network’s” flagship enterprise “Alongside Night” was instantly born.
With a format of “Politics, Paranormal & Pop Culture”, the new show’s time slot was hardly a coincidence. Starting at 9pm PST, Leo slated “Alongside Night” to go head to head with the master himself: his former employer Art Bell. Joining forces with writer and independent movie producer Neil J. Shulman, Ashcraft was banking on a major “soft launch” success. Then, right at the 11th hour, citing major health issues and an emergency hospital stay, Leo quietly pulled the plug on the doomed pilot project.
As if the public hadn’t already witnessed enough insane drama, things took a turn for even the more bizarre when reports of a near fatal road accident involving Leo’s family members suddenly started to make the rounds. Details were sketchy, but word was both his wife and daughter had recently been “T-Boned” at an intersection, by an irresponsible and out of control driver, down near their rustic “piney woods” home in rural Texas.
Fans everywhere couldn’t help but ask themselves: Was this all just some kind of freakish coincidence, or were they actually witnessing first hand, the “killer” kind of hardball tactics it takes if you wanna be King?
So, this is the point where everything started to pretty much calm down, right? Well, no. Not exactly. A few days later, right in the middle of one of his LIVE shows, Art breathlessly announced to his listening audience there were gunshots supposedly being fired outside his desert compound. Locked and loaded, he was stepping outside to take care of things. Now the rumours REALLY started to fly.
Witnessed in such quarters as the infamous Bell Gab internet forum, some of the scenarios got pretty wild.
Had Leo’s now “former” co-host Neil J. Shulman gone completely commando? Another “peculiar” fellow resident of the quiet, cozy little desert town of Pahrump, Nevada, as fate would have it, he was based only a few short miles down the road from Bell. Had the pressure and humiliation of the whole messy ordeal become too much to bear? Maybe the libertarian leaning, self professed “anarchist” author and independent film producer had finally just snapped?
Decked out in camo face paint, battle fatigues, 2 holstered glocks and a sawed-off 12 gauge, pump-action shotgun, he was damn sure gonna make somebody pay.
Ok, so maybe that wasn’t quite it. Art’s fans were notorious for their wild imaginations, and “outside the box” thinking. Maybe this was just another case of their overly paranoid, collectively stoned-out fantasy scenarios.
Then again, Leo had recently claimed, on-air nonetheless, to still have a few high-powered connections up in Nevada. Maybe he’d paid off one of the state’s infamous hit men to either “take care” of the competition, or simply send a clear message.
Whatever the case, if this is how contenders to the crown of late night talk radio planned on scrapping it out, you couldn’t help but sense the end result wasn’t going to be pretty.
