Las Vegas Review-Journal
Longtime radio host Art Bell died Friday at his Pahrump home, the Nye County Sheriff’s Office announced. He was 72.
Bell’s paranormal-themed show, “Coast to Coast AM,” was syndicated on about 500 North American stations in the 1990s before he left the nightly show in 2002. He broadcast the show from Pahrump’s KNYE 95.1 FM, a station he founded.
Bell retired several times in his career, which included a short-lived show on SiriusXM satellite radio in 2013.
Returning to terrestrial radio afterward was not a difficult decision, he told the Pahrump Valley Times in August 2013.
“That’s easy, because I love it,” he said at the time. “It’s my life, and that’s all I have ever done. I went through a lot of family problems, so that interrupted things, and I was overseas for four years, and that certainly interrupted things. I went back into radio because I love it.”
Bell was inducted into the Nevada Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 2006. He did not attend the presentation.
In 2008, Bell was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Bell was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina, on June 17, 1945. He served in the the U.S. Air Force as a medic during the Vietnam War.
According to the Coast to Coast AM website, Bell was an FCC licensed radio technician at age 13. He also set a Guinness World Record for a solo broadcast marathon, at more than 116 hours, while working as a DJ in Okinawa, Japan, the website said.