Every Tuesday morning, the SF Weekly news blog the Snitch profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. -ed
By Ty Callister
Ted Leibowitz is most famed for his DJ’ing at indie rock station BAGeL Radio, but he’s also a blog guru of sorts. He teaches a San Francisco State class on blogging, writes for the blog State of the Day, and, of course, runs the official BAGeL Radio blog.
Leibowitz, who wears spiky hair, sharp sideburns, and a total of four earrings, is the quintessential home studio impresario. Walk to the end of the hall in his apartment and you’ll find a spare room lit by the sunny fog of the Richmond District. You’ll probably see one of his cats sniffing around the desk full of computer screens and mixing boards. To the side of the desk you’ll see hundreds of CD’s stacked and a little scratching post for the cats. And you’ll see Leibowitz at the mic, sipping from a red sports bottle, informing his listeners about the various news and events of the indie music scene.
The BAGeL Radio blog arose in 2005 when ...
Leibowitz realized that BAGeL Radio was becoming more than a casual hobby. The station had amassed thousands of listeners, Leibowitz was getting countless e-mails, and the best way to handle an online audience that size was a blog. “It’s changed the way I communicate with the BAGeL Radio audience by allowing me to post things to one place and let people go there… instead of relying on an e-mail list,” he says.
Via the BAGeL Radio blog site, the audience can send both instant messages and audio messages to the DJ, or even join the “reader community” where they can see a tiny picture of themselves on the site. The blog has become a place where Leibowitz not only updates his audience with what’s going on at BAGeL Radio, but also posts various musings about the world of underground music. Topic highlights on his blog have included the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, and, on a more serious note, a tribute to the late CBGB’s owner Hilly Kristal.
BAGeL Radio delivers about 40,000 streams per month. 40% of listeners are in the Bay Area, 25% are in the rest of California, and the other 35% are spread throughout the rest of the world.
BAGeL Radio’s revenue is limited, but Leibowitz doesn’t have to do a nine-to-five job to get by. Outside of the teaching job and running the station, Leibowitz supplements his income with various contract jobs from copyediting to selling merchandise at baseball games.
Leibowitz says that, “blogging is not a new technology; it’s a new use of a technology.” He says the only thing new is that it has become easier to create blogs and it’s now “as easy as writing an e-mail.” (With the exception of The Snitch, of course, which is created by a complex blogging system you couldn’t possibly understand).
Despite predictions that internet radio was going to shut down to due controversy over music royalty rates, BAGeL Radio and it’s blog continues run at full steam, and Leibowitz seems hopeful for the future. “It is a much more widely used and more influential medium than it was,” he says. “And listenership keeps growing.”
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