[SwellJoe]

When I was in college I worked the night shift at a television station in the tape room, and spent most of my time, four to five hours each eight hour shift, learning UNIX system administration, shell and Perl programming, or writing songs. However, last I heard, stations had started automating away most tape duties and merging the master control and tape operator jobs into one. Master control is not a "lot of downtime" kind of job--there are interruptions every few minutes, though I imagine it's seen some automation improvement since then.

System administration positions often have a lot of downtime, since if you're doing your job well, nothing is urgent and everything just hums along real pretty-like. Night watch in a hosting data center would probably be a great choice. If you're still in school, night shift in a university tech center would probably be a good choice, too (assuming it's open 24 hours...I think most large universities do have at least one center that is open all night).

Finally, have you considered contract work? This is a different model altogether. Instead of taking a job where you can half-ass it, and work on what you really want to most of the time, you take jobs every few weeks where you work your ass off, get paid a metric ass ton (like $100-$150 per hour), and finish the project in a week or two. Then you're free to hack for pleasure for a few weeks before taking on another paying gig. This has mostly been what I've done since leaving college and the television station. I usually billed $1000/day plus all expenses, if travel or whatever was involved, and often made more than my friends who worked full-time at regular jobs...it only takes a few projects for that math to work out.

[andyking]

Radio stations have also become increasingly automated over the past few years and mostly have no-one in the building overnight. (In days gone by, they'd sometimes employ a DJ to play music without talking through the night!)

However, there are still positions where you spend a lot of time sitting in the studio with not a lot to do. Many stations run "network" programming which is delivered via satellite or ISDN from a central hub and employ a "tech op", usually a wannabe DJ who's still in school, to oversee it and make sure the network feed and local ads or other inserts go out on air. It's a job with a lot of downtime and you're sitting in a room full of computers. What could be better?!