Do pennies from heaven accompany research of intergalactic beamships? Not quite.
2/7/2000
AlienZoo resident ufologist Jim Dilettoso's article Mission Control explores UFO research, ET technologies, and moments in ufology's past.
Hollywood has had little trouble collecting from ufology.s cosmic ATM machine. When we think of UFOs these days, we think of images that come directly from TV and movies, like the famous actors who have seen UFOs, or Scully and Mulder, or Steven Spielberg. But comparatively few people . if anyone at all . have made any real money in the field of UFOs. I can.t help but wonder whether there are any prosperous abductees.
Meantime, a group of mega-wealthy businessmen . Joe Firmage, Bob Bigelow, and Laurence Rockefeller . continue to keep the dream of discovering the origin of UFOs alive. But these privileged gentlemen are ultimately the UFO arena.s "lone wolves": They.re isolated, somehow, from the pack of UFO researchers because they seem to harbor an agenda that veers sharply away from what everyone else is thinking and writing. These multi-millionaires come from the outside. Their wealth has afforded them to explore a very deep personal interest, and, consequently, the results of the research they fund largely remain locked away from public view.
Actually, Firmage, Bigelow, and Rockefeller represent the latest in a long parade of tycoon types who arrive on the ufology scene to invest, grant, fund, promote, and direct UFO research. Unfortunately, there is an equally long precedent of tycoons who have proven to be Johnny-come-latelies, who disappear from the field without achieving serious and lasting results.
Few angel underwriters
So many already-rich, highly visible personalities have entered ufology with the wide-eyed promise of changing everything, funding everybody, and blowing the lid off UFO research. In addition to Firmage, Bigelow, and Rockefeller, names like George Soros, Jackie Gleason, Barry Gibb (of the Bee Gees), John Northrup, Alan Klein (ABKCO Records), Sidney Eisenberg, Lord Clancarty, and Dennis Weaver have gilded ufology.s history book.
While Ivy West funded Richard Hoaglund for a while, ufology suffers from a lack of true angel underwriters. The only real action has been incited by big-money movie producers like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who fund UFO research to deepen their scripts and make more compelling box-office smashes. The fact of the matter is that more people have grown wealthy off alien themes and research than the soldiers in ufology.s trenches, who write book after book as a means to build context around hard-to-explain phenomena.
Luckily, Hollywood producers Henry Winkler and Paul Davids, who have had their own UFO experiences, demonstrate pure passion for telling a story . a passion you can see on the screen. Winkler.s UFO Sightings. (now in re-runs on the Sci-Fi Channel) became the first well-produced, well-investigated UFO TV show. The show.s investigators were, to a certain degree, well-funded, thanks to advertisers. Eventually, however, .Sightings. ran out of new material.
Entertainment: Where the real money can be found
Hundreds of UFO videos have been made; many don.t sell a single copy. You can choose from more than 1,000 hours of UFO conference videos, but the best of these can be counted on one hand. And most of these will never sell a single copy. UFO Central, the noted video clearing house, is laden with sluggish sellers. For example, priced at $19.95, .The Truth about ETs. sold only 718 copies as of January 25. By comparison, .Star Wars. . the fantasy about ETs . has grossed $400 million at the box office. Could it be that the truth just doesn.t sell very well?
UFO conferences just barely eke by. Tim Beckley has retired from organizing the Alien Agenda and Truth about UFOs conferences. UFO-West, once promoted by James Aramat, is long gone. The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) regularly promotes events with 40 people and 42 vendors. The International UFO Congress (IUFOC) survives on the cookie jar of Bob and Terri Brown.
Merchandise and trinkets can be a money-maker. Aliens and UFOs can be found on everything from backpacks to fruit roll-ups. The gift shop of the International UFO Museum and Research Center keeps the Roswell museum afloat; the average visitor spends $65 there. Not every ufological stab at merchandising works, however: 10,000 shirts were printed for The Prophets Conference in 1998, but 9,500 unsold shirts were returned to a now-bankrupt printing company. Meantime, Backstreet Boys sold $24 million in T-shirts and lunch boxes last year.
Some money can be made in selling UFO videos and photos to TV networks. But the big payoff is rare: For his .World.s Greatest UFO Photos. special on Fox, Bob Kiviatt purchased a set of shots from a Mexico City group for a reported $30,000. Exemplifying what happens most of the time, a fortunate Tim Edwards sold a UFO photo to Hard Copy for $300. Some UFO witnesses who capture once-in-a-lifetime video go on to become local heroes, but end up whining about the lousy $1,000 they got from A&E Channel.
More than 500 UFO books can be purchased at online retailers Borders.com, Amazon, and UFO Mind. But is anyone buying? Jim Marrs did extremely well with "Alien Agenda," selling 175,000 copies in hardcover, but this proved to be an exception. Lloyd Pye, author of the breakthrough scholarly work "Everything You Know Is Wrong," still has his day job. Dr. John Mack has written a couple of great books, but he.s still teaching at Harvard.
UFO researchers may not make a lot of money at what they do, but interviews with them are what powers Art Bell.s Coast to Coast AM radio show . the backbone of the UFO media machine . which is heard nightly by up to 12 million listeners. Supported by the top-shelf www.artbell.com Web site, the syndicated radio show was recently sold for a reported $12 million . a dollar a listener. Jeff Rense.s "Sightings on the Radio," meanwhile, is arguably a close second with an equally useful Web site, www.sightings.com. The value of Rense.s show and site isn.t known, but you know the host has a staggering number of listeners.
So-called "tabloid TV" programs and local news affiliates frequently cash in on UFO sightings to grab ratings. Current Affair, Hard Copy, and Inside Edition will pump a UFO story to the max to get their $20,000 advertising spot. Notice how the UFO story is always at the end of the show, to tease the ads; you have to wait-out the entire show before you get to see the footage. In 1998 alone, Phoenix, Arizona.s four local stations ran a total of 78 stories about the Phoenix Lights, according to the Mesa News Duplication service, garnering roughly $250,000 in advertising revenue.
Although difficult to prove for some, it should be noted that the most lucrative market for UFO-related products might be alien technology. In his legendary book, "The Day After Roswell," the late Col. Philip Corso, U.S. Army (Ret) listed 20-plus companies . the likes of chemical companies Dow and DuPont . that he knows benefited from ET technology reaching Earth. These firms were, in fact, handed ET technology (lasers and computer chips, for example) to research, manufacture, and market. Billions of dollars in profits have resulted, leading many UFO researchers to contend that there exists a power elite who have a monopoly on technologies so advanced that they.re beyond our comprehension.
Adding all of this up, we find that a few abductees and investigators have made a few hundred dollars, while movie moguls and technocrats have made a few hundred million. UFO tycoon-patrons fan the flames of the dynamic. It.s incredibly ironic, though, how UFO research merely becomes grist for fantastic films that gross sky-high amounts. Purely and simply, entertainment sells.