Why A BAGeL?
The origin of the name "BAGeL Radio"
TL; DR: it started off as an informal, irregular e-mail to our music-loving friends.
In late 90s San Francisco as Web 2.0 was taking shape we found that live events would sell out before our friends could get tickets. We’d show up to “sold out” venues to find them perhaps 2/3s full because many who had bought tickets didn’t bother to show up. To combat this we’d send e-mails to friends about when tickets were going on sale for favorite local bands & touring bands who were coming to town.
Those friends forwarded the e-mails to their gig-going friends. Some of those friends of friends of friends of friends got sick of trying to decipher the content amidst all of the forward bracket symbols (>>>) so they asked to be added to the distribution list. About a year after it began this e-mail was being directly distributed to over 1000 recipients.
(Keep in mind this was eons ago when such information was scattered across the still-nascent World Wide Web, a time before online gig guides, Facebook…even MySpace was barely a twinkle in old Tom's eye).
A friend of the station suggested that this 'newsletter' needed a name. We asked ourselves, "OK, what is this thing?" & immediately decided it was the Bay Area Gig eList. The name was condensed into an acronym for the subject line: “BAGeL 12/8/98" (for example).
When launching the internet radio station we tried to come up with a name along the same lines, however nothing we came up with quite rolled off the tongue quite like "BAGeL Radio," so we stuck with the code name & in February of 2003 BAGeL Radio was born.
And there you have it.
Ted Leibowitz, BAGeL Radio
Program Director, Music Director, DJ, Tech Support Specialist, QA Engineer, Community Support Manager, Photographer, Copywriter, Copy Editor, Producer, Reporter, IT, Booking, Promotions, Sound Technician, Cult Leader, and Brewer of the strong, strong coffee