Fortunately or not, radio is a public medium, and the airwaves are technically “free,” so no one wants to pay for it, even a paltry amount like the $2.50 per term we were asking for it. Add competition from radio on demand and the Internet, as well as the consumptive “What’s in it for me?” attitude today’s university students have, and the future of campus radio is bleak at best. In particular, as democratic as people think the Internet is, it still requires a certain level of skill and resources to be a competitive part of the Internet market, and other outlets simply have the funds that campus radio stations do not.

What campus radio offers that Internet and commercial radio don’t is a real sense of your own peers, your own community. Example: A few months ago, the Spanish-language show Estellos de America had a Guatemalan marimba band set up here in the Sound-FM green room area. They left, I did my show, and the show after mine, The Smokin’ Word, held a live wedding on air, all in a four hour period. This sense of shared space and the unexpected is what’s kept me devoted to campus radio for fourteen years. I’m proud to have been part of it, and I will continue to fight for it, because I know exactly what it offers. I’m only sad that future generations of UW students won’t have the same opportunity.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/BrAnalysis/rm2008/rm34.htm

That plus the fact that Apple has put a radio tuner in the new iPods suggests to me that local radio is alive and well and with a very bright future!