Last Updated on August 22, 2021 by Raider1
Unfortunately, the sound clips that accompanied this article are lost to time. Real Audio has long been a dying format. If the clips are in .ra format, I can usually grab them, but if they are in .ram format which is a playlist pulling the .ra files from a 3rd party server, I can’t get them.
I did manage to grab a video and audio copy of the Area 51 caller. Hear the call as it happened:
The audio clip is uploaded to our Sound Clips folder. You can access that here – https://radioraider.com/artbellsounds
I also found this video which has some of the clips mentioned below I was unable to grab from the Archive. You may find this interesting. I also nabbed the audio from this video because you know how YouTube likes to memory hole things. That’s in the Sound Clips folder here.
On September 11, 1997, while Art had planned an exciting evening of taking calls from Area 51 employees, little did he know that the cosmos had more in store that night. (All calls are now available on the Sound Clips Page.)
Midway through the program, during a pretty interesting call, the radio program abruptly went off the air. First, it was thought that the content of the caller’s message, may have caused some powers that be, to pull the plug! But as you are soon to find out, it was the GE Americom satellite going out of “Earth Lock.”
These clips are from the C-Band Satellite feed. Since that feed itself is fed from the KU band feed from the network, you will hear the network feed at the bottom of the hour start failing, then later into the program, Art’s signal drops out. We present the entire episode here in a Real-Audio, with a transcript of the call and a chronology of events.
Chronology
We pick up the network feed at the bottom of the hour approx at 12:30 PDT. This Real Audio clip runs 30 minutes. –
Here is the elapsed timeline of this clip:
- 0:00 – Art breaks at the bottom of the hour
- 2:30 – First network feed glitch starts
- 2:47 – 3:36 More signals breaks of the network signal
- 6:00 – Art comes back from break (all clear)
- 12:47 – Art takes the Area 51 caller on the air
Read along with this transcript, courtesy of Wes Thomas.
Art: On my Area 51 line, you’re on the air, hello.
Male caller: Hello, Art?
Art: Yes
Caller [sounds frightened]: I don’t have a whole lot of time.
Art: Well, look, let’s begin by finding out if you’re using this line properly or not.
Caller: OK, in Area 51?
Art: Yes. Are you an employee or are you now?
Caller: I’m a former employee. I, I was let go on a medical discharge about a week ago and, and… [chokes] I kind of been running across the country. Damn, I don’t know where to start, they’re, they’re gonna, they’ll triangulate on this position really soon.
Art: So you can’t spend a lot of time on the phone, so give us something quick.
Caller [voice breaking up with apparent suppressed crying]: OK, um, um, OK, what we’re thinking of as aliens, Art, they’re extradimensional beings, that, an earlier precursor of the space program they made contact with. They are not what they claim to be. They’ve infiltrated a lot of aspects of, of, of the military establishment, particularly the Area 51.
The disasters that are coming, they, the military, I’m sorry, the government knows about them. And there’s a lot of safe areas in this world that they could begin moving the population to now, Art.
Art: So they’re not doing, not doing anything.
Caller: They are not. They want those major population centers wiped out so that the few that are left will be more easily controllable….”
Art [fragment]: …discharged…
Caller [sobbing, then fragment]: I say we g ….
Continuing with the timeline of the sound clip:
- 13:00 – First glitch occurs
- 14:30 – 14:55 More signal breakups
- 14:55 – Signal dead! Art’s signal gone
- 15:20 – Network feed is still up, so music started
- 16:40 – Network plays taped program of Mark Furman interview
- 18:00 – Network feed starts to drop out now on C-band link
- 19:55 – Network feed to C-band is dead
- 20:55 – Network signal starts returning
- 26:50 – Art is back on Land-Line to Network
- 26:50 – Network link to C-band still bad
At this point, Art and the network are telephone land-line linked to each other and the network is LL linked to the digital uplink satellite. So all the affiliates are receiving the program fine (through the digital system), however the KU to C-Band feed is still choppy and so my personal signal and the signal that AudioNet receives is still intermittent. Here is a sound clip of that portion of the program.
After the top of the hour break, Art gets Toni Howell from the network on the air to explain what has happened. By now the “event” is over and all signals are back to normal. Art’s radio network engineer reports that the network’s communication satellite lost 50 channels (including Art’s feed) at that moment, possibly due to a “lost earth sensor” (so it no longer pointed to the earth station). Toni explains the phone call she had with GE Americom in this RA clip.
Remember, even though they thought the network signal was working, (as it was for the digital feed to the affiliates), the KU signal from New Jersey to Denver, which feeds the C-Band signal, was having signal problems along with Art. It is interesting to note, that each signal dropped out at different times. While Art’s signal was OK, the network was not, and while the network was working, Art’s signal alone dropped out. So it took awhile to figure out what had happened. Different channels on the satellite dropped out at different times.
Later in the program, a new caller asked: “What happened during that one minute of the Area 51 employee call, that we didn’t get to hear?” Art just happened to have a witness in the studio that night. A reporter from Penthouse Magazine was there doing a story on Art. So when asked, Art puts the reporter on the headset and has him answer a few questions about the call. Here is that segment.
Well, that’s about it. If we get the official story from GE Americom, we’ll post it here. This program will be repeated this weekend, and as I stated above, I will post all the calls that did make it on the air, to the sound clips page in a few days.
This Content Found:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980114082247/http://www.artbell.com/satoutage.html