For about 20 years following WWII, the Big Money paid relatively little
attention to the FM radio band, moving instead into TV.  So it was that
small commercial stations could be set up (sometimes by classical music
enthusiasts), and could be run on a shoe-string, supported by their meager
commercial income.  The limited competition for frequencies in this
low-revenue business meant that non-commercial alternative stations could
also find frequencies.  Temptations to do otherwise with a license were
limited by the limited revenue possibilities.

Technological improvements in receivers---much improved sound, on the
one hand, and miniaturization to permit portables on the other---greatly
expanded the FM audience and so changed the situation.  Revenue
possibilities in FM broadcasting grew and grew.  For a time, the FCC
distorted the operation of pure Market forces, because of a quaint concept
called "public interest".  However, the FCC commissioners appointed during
the Reagan administration and after largely abandoned even the pretense of
an interest in the public interest.

So, the Market is working its wonders on FM broadcasting, which
increasingly reflects the rule that it is more profitable to broadcast
hip hop than HIP.  A few fossils like WQXR remain, due to the weight
of tradition and inertia, but will gradually succumb.  In the meantime,
the public stations have been partly commercialized---through their
dependence on "underwriter" messages--and so tend in the same direction.
This is presumably the explanation of the steady replacement of CM by
talk on public stations.  Moreover, NPR itself has long campaigned to
"professionalize" its affiliate stations, which means pressuring them
to imitate the commercial radio style.

Cities which retain more than a trace of CM on FM are thus on the
eccentric end of a distribution which is growing steadily tighter.

Have a happy///Jon Gallant  ([log in to unmask])