Art Bell reruns

    When the world was a slightly younger place and there was no cable TV and only three or four channels, we all hated reruns. More recently, I remember a big advertising campaign to the effect that, "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" Basically, that network was bragging that nobody watches broadcast TV anymore. It was probably a better approach than, "You didn't want to watch it the first time, but maybe you'll want to watch it the second time!" Or not.
    The reruns that dominate my life are all from radio. I'm a huge fan of old-time radio. For the purposes of this post, I'd better specify that this term refers to shows from the '30s, '40s and '50s, the Golden Age of radio. But I also listen on weekends to rebroadcasts of Casey Kasem's American Top 40 ('70s on Saturday, '80s on Sunday) and of Art Bell's old overnight shows, rebroadcast fortunately earlier in the evening, Saturdays.
    I'm finally about to give up on the latter. I have no idea who is picking the shows to rebroadcast or why. I can only assume that it's somebody who isn't interested in making money or ratings and who hates Art Bell. Art had a show where anybody could call in and tell him about the spaceships they've seen, the space aliens they've met, or the monsters they've caught and are keeping in the basement. (Well, it may have been the refrigerator.) Tips on what hell is really like, remote viewing of Jesus (I'm still not making any of this up), just crazy, crazy stuff. And virtually none of this ever makes the rebroadcasts.
    Instead you get endless political discussion of issues from 20-odd years ago, including many viewpoints that Art later repudiated. Last night was a new low: hours of discussion of a UPS strike from 1997. I mean, MAN! What could be more fascinating in 2015? ANYTHING!
    The other favorite kind of show to rebroadcast is one of the ones where Art talks to a self-styled prophet, all of whose forecasts (except for stuff like "War in the Middle East") have long since been proven wrong. All this is very funny, of course, but still argues for selection on the basis of making Art look foolish. Where my damn space aliens? Where my damn screaming monster in the spare fridge? Or if you have to do fraudulent forecasts, why not run that great one about putting a gold capstone on the Great Pyramid which would turn it into a huge machine that would kick off a New Age for the new millennium?
    All this thought about the reruns in my life makes me feel like a "You kids get off my lawn!" type of oldster, but I'm not sure that that's fair. I don't think the old stuff is better or even as good as the entertainment of today. It's just that the great thing about the past is that there's so much of it! If I have a couple hundred episodes of the old-time radio show Escape and 3/4 of them are good, that's a lot of good entertainment there. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Mad Men and Breaking Bad (or whatever the show of the moment is) are absolutely brilliant. But A) I would have to track them down and I have my radio episodes already; and B) I bet they don't have Boris Karloff. So there!