| abstract | - Radio stations in colleges and universities, often portrayed as a couple of students brought in to try their hand at being an announcer or talk show host, which is usually Truth in Television. The students are probably majoring in communications or a related field, although oftentimes, there won't be enough communications students to fill the roster, so students from other departments are allowed to take air shifts. College radio stations are very rarely high priority. There was a time when college radio, even at state colleges in fairly conservative states, was both the last bastion of truly unadulterated Sixties liberalism in the media, and the proving grounds for many a genre of music that eventually became mainstream, such as Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, and Hip Hop. Nowadays, college radio is still going strong, even if the Internet has mainly taken over the once-pivotal role that it played in the development of pop culture. However, they are still a useful source of underground music. In fiction, the college station is something that either everyone listens to, or no one does. Either the whole campus (and no small number of people in the school's metropolitan area) tune in to the station, or the astonishingly low listener-base becomes a Running Gag.
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