The sound and the, uh, vision of David Bowie participating in an A&E Live by Request broadcast on the evening of Saturday June 15 was at first sight a little disturbing. I mean, here’s a guy who’s as close as it gets to rock royalty without active intervention by Her Majesty. But instead of spending a quiet evening with his wife and the loads of money that have left him with the freedom to do as he wishes for the rest of his life, he was standing awkwardly around a blandly overlit stage taking phone-in requests from people too excited to form coherent sentences. It just didn’t seem right.

Seeing Don Henley take phone requests on A&E a couple years back was fine — he deserved it. But Bowie’s worst sin was Tin Machine, and at least that found him challenging himself. Although he hasn’t released anything to rival his ’70s classics for 10 or 15 years, he has grown into the role of a dignified elder statesman — an oddly handsome artist whose Ginsu-knife edge has proved impervious to all manner of commercial bludgeoning, and whose slice-and-dice wisdom has been sought by such respectable nuts as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Trent Reznor. So why subject himself to the humiliation of taking requests on a channel best known as a reliable source for Law and Order reruns?

There’s no easy answer to that question. But it’s a troubling sign of the times for aging artists like Bowie who are faced with the difficult task of promoting a new CD — in this case the fairly adequate and reliable Heathen (ISO/Columbia) — without substantial support from radio. Which is not to say that Heathen or any other album deserves radio play. But it has its moments. One of the best things about it is the absence of Reeves Gabrels, a very talented and innovative guitarist whose overbearing style never seemed to mesh with Bowie’s subtle stylings in the decade or so they collaborated. Instead, Dave Grohl and Pete Townshend get their six-string say on one tune apiece, and Bowie recruits some interesting back-up players, including violinist Lisa Germano and pianist Kristeen Young, to flesh out a collection of tunes that splits the difference between digitally programmed backing tracks and more organic, band-oriented arrangements like the one that propels his suitably roughed-up version of the Pixies tune "Cactus." He keeps the guitars cranked for a cover of Neil Young’s "I’ve Been Waiting for You" but lets technology do more of the talking on the Legendary Stardust Cowboys’ "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship."

Heathen doesn’t have a prayer of comparing favorably with, say, Young Americans or Ziggy Stardust or Heroes or Hunky Dory, etc. But to Bowie’s credit, it doesn’t aim to compete on that level. Indeed, there’s nothing tortured or overwrought here; you get the sense he had a few songs and an itch to have some fun recording. He must have known that the few radio formats still open to his music are interested only in the time-tested hits. And with videos becoming less and less a part of MTV’s programming, yet another avenue of promotion has been all but closed to the few artists in Bowie’s league. He’s a king without a castle, a star without a stage, an exile from the visual and sonic pop world he helped create. He may be able to fill more stadium seats than Papa Roach, but he’s no longer hooked into the youth market whose wallets open every Tuesday for the big modern-rock release of the week. In fact, the average Bowie fan is more likely to pick up a box-set collection of his hits than his new album.

And so we’ve unwittingly banished the Bowies of world to the less than dignified realm of A&E call-in request specials, to licensing songs to ad agencies, and, for those who can handle the humiliation, to 15 minutes of Middle American fame on the Regis-and-whoever-took-over for-Kathie-Lee show. One can imagine worse fates — when it comes to undignified, Ozzy Osbourne has taken the cake and, from the looks of it, eaten it too. And that doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. (It’s not clear that Ozzy’s bothered by anything beyond the necessary human functions of eating, drinking, sleeping, and using the bathroom.) What is clear, though, is that increasing numbers of respectable artists with solid fan bases and more than a little creative juice left have temporarily found themselves without a home in the mainstream music business. Somebody’s going to figure out a way to take advantage of that, and on a much bigger scale than A&E’s call-in request specials. In the meantime, A&E’s Live by Request Starring David Bowie, which does feature a rockin’ version of "Ziggy Stardust," re-airs this Friday morning, June 28, from 1 to 3 a.m., pre-empting the 1 a.m. Law and Order that would ordinarily be on at that time.