I miss the days of real radio. In the day I had a big antenna and appreciated excellent tuners. My favorite was the MR78 with it's little adjacent channel selectivity "trick". By rotating the antenna and using the narrow bandwidth IF strip, I could reach multiple metropolitan areas.

Now, it's the clash of the corporate playlists. Rather than a program manager and a staff with heart and community, it's an MBA with a spreadsheet managing multiple automated stations from a single desk. There are blocks of commercials running several minutes, a few minutes of content, then repeat.

At one point there was a family owned classical music station with a locked up audience. Likely, someone wanted to retire and the station was sold, the on-air personalities dumped, and there was an instant format change. But the station ended up as one station over the market limit for corporate and was sold again, and again, and again as various corporations jockeyed for market position and dumped their over the limit weak child. Each sale resulted in about a $10M profit. After being passed around and around, the final sale that I'm aware of was for about $60M. I can't imagine a business plan that can support that level of debt. Perhaps someone figured out how to use it as an accounting gimmick. Maybe it was the towers that everyone wanted. (Good location, AM & FM, permits in order)

In any case they can keep their corporate games, I'm not playing.