What happened to Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis?
Ground Zero — the late-night paranormal and conspiracy talk radio programme hosted by Clyde Lewis — left national syndication at the end of January 2026. The show isn't dead, but its terrestrial radio run is over. Here's what happened.
The short answer
A combination of the host's serious health problems and a collapse in advertising revenue:
- Kidney failure — Lewis was hospitalised and placed in a nursing facility, taking him off the air for an extended period.
- Lost affiliates — With the host absent, several stations dropped the programme.
- Zero ad revenue — The show received no advertising income from stations for four months straight.
- Studio costs — The show was paying out of pocket to rent studio space at AM 860, with nothing coming back in.
"We will no longer be on syndicated terrestrial radio after the end of this month," a social media post from the show read. "Clyde is scheduled to be out of the nursing facility mid-February and will resume hosting Ground Zero."
The longer version
Lewis launched Ground Zero in 1995 as a Sunday-night show on KCNR in Salt Lake City. He relocated to Portland in 1999, bounced between several stations — 910 KOTK, 101.1 KUFO, various webcasters — and landed at 101.1 KXL-FM in 2011, where Premiere Networks picked the show up for national syndication the following year. By the time it left syndication, it was distributed by Talk Media Network and based out of Salem Media Group's AM 860 The Answer (KPAM) in Troutdale, Oregon.
The programme occupied a specific niche — late-night talk about UFOs, government secrecy, unexplained phenomena, and fringe science — in the tradition of Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM. Lewis built a following across stations including 840 WHAS in Louisville, 580 KIDO in Boise, and 98.9 WORD in Greenville. But late-night talk is a hard sell for advertisers, and when the host went down with kidney failure, the economics collapsed.
Where is the show now?
Ground Zero has moved to an entirely digital model. The show's website, Ground Zero Plus, operates as a streaming hub and subscription service — commercial-free archives, live chatrooms, webinars, bonus content. Lewis was scheduled to leave the nursing facility in mid-February 2026 and resume hosting.