[quesera]

It's actually not that expensive to run a radio station. Especially one staffed by volunteers and operating a (relatively) low-power transmitter, in the range of a few hundred or a thousand watts. Far less expensive than streaming to even a tiny fraction of the potential audience of any mid sized MSA.

Even commercial stations are not big business. That's why consolidation has been so successful -- no one was making enough money to hold back the tide. Economies of scale, etc.

But Boston has the absolute best college radio options in the country and probably the world, and each of the five or six excellent stations runs a local music show. They're not always conveniently scheduled, but that's an inescapable problem with broadcast media.

None of these operations would survive in a commercial context, and they'd be even less likely to if they were hyperlocalized. The audience is there but the market is not.