Tuesday was the 1st annual National College Radio day, an effort to create interest in “saving” college radio. (there are still high schools with licenses, but I don’t think they were included)
Interest in radio in colleges is close to non-existent with a few exceptions. There are few jobs these days in radio even for the people already in the “Biz”. Automation has replaced many of those jobs and the ones remaining are pretty bleak, typically just announcing songs being played from a playlist controlled by an executive or a computer algorithm 1000 miles away.
Colleges seem to be one of two flavors – that their radio station is a part of vocational training in the communications department or that it is a a social activity like the French club – where volunteer DJs “play” on the radio, bringing in their music collection and playing it to the 2 people listening to the station.
Many colleges have decided to drop their college stations. A lot of them are being sold (or given) to state Public radio networks and just become another repeater on the state network. Some are being sold to religious groups like catholic lay groups that carry EWTN.
Many are just playing automated music 24 hrs/day to preserve the license for that magical day someday when people start to care about radio again. Others just are off the air and nobody knows or cares – until EMF comes along and challenges the license for not actually being on the air….
Heck! I did miss it. I was busy, out helping to organize Occupy Hollywood, Occupy NBA, NFL, and MLB mobs.