Watchdog

Steve and Alex, who do their show from Steve's basement, are part of the vast BlogTalkRadio world, in which tens of thousands of people have registered in the past year to put on their own talk shows.

There is no charge for doing so. The idea is to generate revenue through ads. CEO Alan Levy said some of the revenue would be shared with hosts.

Levy said the most popular sports-oriented show is hosted by Matt Cerrone, who also is the proprietor of MetsBlog.com.

Alex Silverman and Steve Grill, a pair of 16-year-old Isles fans, have been hosting their show since March. They branched out from the school radio station to a potential worldwide audience, but one that still averages a modest 20-25 live listeners most Saturday afternoons. Another couple of hundred people listen to each show via archive downloads.

"The response has been fabulous,'' Alex said.

Said Steve: "We got an e-mail from an Islanders fan in California, and he said, 'I just started listening a few weeks ago and love it, especially since there’s not that much Islanders coverage in California.' We got a call from Hawaii once from someone who used to live on Long Isand."

Alex said there were callers from Canada before a game against the Sabres, looking for "a rival's point of view."

Steve said his father heard about BlogTalkRadio and suggested he check it out. "I didn't expect that any average person can create their own talk show about anything,'' Steve said.

The partners believe they are filling a niche. Said Alex: "I just feel like the Islanders don’t get the attention they deserve being Long Island’s only hometown team. That’s what I thought would make this show so special."

The hosts promote the show through message boards and sites such as My Space and Facebook.

Thus do hosts help promote BlogTalkRadio itself. Levy said the site averages about 6,000 shows a month, and has had about 35,000 total shows since its launch a year ago.

Ads can be targeted based on show topics.

"We had no content a year ago,'' said Levy, who developed the technology for the site. "Now we have a network and audience and are beginning to monetize that."

Levy, who grew up in Seaford and was in attendance when the Islanders won their first Cup in 1980, has taken a particular interest in Alex and Steve and called in to their first show.

I asked him whether there might come a point where every person on Earth has his or her own show and/or blog, and whether that might be a problem because there would be no one to listen to the shows.

"That would be a good problem to have,'' he said.