As I write this, Sirius XM is running its last Dark Matter program. Even after he quit, they kept running repeats, since they had no other progamming to put on Channel 104 in his place. They still don't, but starting Monday night (11/11), they'll simply be repeating shows they ran earlier in the day. No more Dark Matter, ever.
Let's first say Art Bell is really good at this type of radio. He had a guest on recently who claims other beings have visited Mars and left behind evidence in the form of space objects on the planet's surface, but NASA is keeping this info from the American public. Art had no doubts he believed this author. And all his callers did too. Even if I didn't believe, it makes for great radio. He also has a great voice and great style as a host.
With talent also comes a bit of craziness. I suppose what makes Art Bell and Howard Stern and others great goes hand-in-hand with their obsessive behavior. Howard is always threatening to quit but he never does. Bell follows through and quits over the nonsense in his head. One time it was his back pain, another was something about his son. For a time, he had his syndicator allow him to do the show from The Phillipines to be with his new Filipino wife, for however long that lasted. When he took on this new Sirius XM show, I guess Bell needed the money or craved the spotlight again, so the back pain went away and so did whatever problems he had in connection with his family and personal life. But he soon came up with new reasons to quit.
I read he says he was bored after doing only a few shows. (It never showed on the air.) So he had to come up with silly excuses to end the program. It sounded to me like he had plenty of callers. But if he's a good radio host, he really doesn't need many. He also complained about the audio quality of the show? I listened on a Sirius device that sounded great, much better than trying to listen to him on AM radio where he used to be.
It had been an ideal situation for him. He was doing the show from his home in Nevada. He didn't have to go to a Sirius studio. He only had to do it four nights a week from 8 to 11pm Mountain Time. Then Sirius would repeat it twice overnight, so you could hear it from 10pm to 6am Eastern Time. He didn't have to worry about ratings or pleasing scores of station owners and program directors, to keep them running the show. It really is a shame the demons in his head prompted him to cancel what should have been an excellent radio show and a sweet deal for him.
