Dunno where you are but local radio programming disappeared in most markets years ago. Even in the Bay Area. All of what you've said about radio content was true a decade or more ago, but much less true now.
And for people who care about live music events (shows etc) it’s a
great way to find out about those things
Big stations promote big acts, sure. But that's easy enough to find information on elsewhere (e.g. Youtube). Smaller stations (e.g. KXSF, KPFA, KZSU) out here promote smaller venues but I'm typically out of range and end up listening to their content via the good old internet.
I’m not sure I Love radio, but I would probably really miss it if
it wasn’t in my car.
There was a time I would (late 90s, early 00s) but now? Not so much. The ratio of music to ads has gotten awful. Even stations that have ostensibly gone back to their roots like KITS are a pale imitation of their past glory. Like they'll wear the meat suit of genres that were previously popular but make sure to mix it with plenty of mediocre top 40 and a suffocating amount of ads.
I don’t really listen to radio while traveling so I’ll take your word for it. In Minnesota we gave The Current, part of MPR family of stations which is pretty good from what I hear (about its status nationally, though always some one will say it “used to be better”). And yeah, that’s ONE station.
Probably another part of it for me is that most of drives are probably considered short, the longest trip is usually 20-30 minutes depending on traffic and that’s only a few times a month.
If I was doing hour long commutes, it’d be podcasts all day.
In the MSP area my two main radio stations are both public radio. The state's MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) station and The Current, which is basically what the GP described for the Twin Cities region.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that I'd miss them if they were gone. OK, I really like listening to Terry Gross and Kai Ryssdal but besides that it's just nice background audio.
A real quick check of "top radio station owners" showed that the top ten all picked up more stations going from 2020 to 2021. Yes there are still a ton of small stations doing god knows what (on the order of 10,000 AM+FM commercial), but there's been a ton of consolidation. Your examples of Terry Gross and Kai Ryssdal kinda highlight that. Neither MPR nor WHYY are local for most of their audience (and arguably neither are focused on local content).
