Azathoth

It’s likely this station is in the non-commercial band if it used to be a college station - anything below 92 mhz. They’re legally not allowed to have actual commercials but they can run PSAs, membership drives, underwriting, etc due to FCC rules.

It’s almost certainly not a ploy: it’s way more likely the college decided the previous format was too expensive. The college probably decided to lease out their frequency to someone else. The lessee still can’t run commercials (or even operate “commercially,” whatever the FCC decides that means), but it’s very easy to pre-program a music format with all the breaks already slotted in which explains the top 40s and the lack of live DJs. The college therefore reduces their operating costs to nearly zero and they make money from the lease at the same time.

This exact situation happened to my college radio station when I was an undergrad and I hated it too.

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