I am now working for the community college station that I graudated from this past spring. We are probably unlike most other college stations in the area (NC) because we are heavily mainstream. A few years ago they hired an instructor part time to run the station and teach a few classes. He flipped the format cold turkey from traditional college rock/metal (that NO ONE would listen to) into a Top 40 station. The school bought an academic version of Prophet called NexGen 101.
Last year they cut the budget and he was gone. It left me as a returning student in the helm to program and do a morning show. It is still a mainstream station, but we break new music before the ulta conservative Raleigh and Fayetteville markets and play lots of local talent that gets great reception and blends in nicely with the chart toppers. You couple that with some kick-ass imaging (one of the only good things that the formet instructor taught me) and we are reaching the county's high school, college, and 20+ crowd like crazy! Its taken 2 years, but now we're getting tons of calls about underwriting and the staff is starting to see how we can use this station as a tool for the community and school.
I think that college radio (at least in our case) should be used to train the students for a career, not to preserve some tradition of music that everyone except 5 people (including the programmer) hate. The students here have SOME leeway to play what they want, but they have to use the automation for some shows, have certain liners to read, and are taught more about what they will encounter in the new and changing radio industry. I know that when I went into my internship last semester, my mastery of NexGen and Adobe Audition (with production and phone call editing) gave me a HUGE step over my peers.
I'm not saying that college stations should be Top 40, but they should be run similar to a commercial station and be running a format that will reach the most people in their area.
