Back home we had a local station, felt like a way of tuning into "the city." Very few breaks outside of their pledge drives once/twice a year. Listening to the Jazz station here on short drives these days. Very few ads, and some pretty gnarly shit. College radio stations are also pretty easy to find and escape that ad insanity.

Don't let radio and broadcast TV die quite yet, it's still very viable, especially as we sort out net neutrality and failsafe systems in cases of emergency.