Personal Observations About Public Radio

Well, I haven't posted in several weeks. No topics that I can talk about here (yet) have come up, until today:

You really have to wonder when a university operates a radio station that is staffed by paid employees. I mean, why was the broadcast facility established, if not for use as an educational tool by university students and faculty?

This came to mind when I learned that Miami University of Ohio is sort of contracting out its operations to WVXU (formerly Xavier University’s station) and firing a half-million dollars’ worth of employees. WMUB (Miami) will mostly simulcast WVXU's programming. (Which, of course, comes primarily from paid or unpaid non-students.)

But—get this!—there’s a bright spot in that Miami just may use faculty and students to generate programming. Duh! You idiots wouldn’t be in this mess if you had put the station to that appropriate use from the beginning.

Why is it that public radio stations affiliated with universities are run mostly by people from the community and not from among faculty and students? Yes, a station needs a couple of real engineers. But not a paid staff sucking up a half-million a year when the university as been squealing like a pig stuck in a picket fence over exceeding their budget?
Did public radio become a scam to get broadcast licenses after the FRC/FCC stopped handing them out of anyone who could writing a convincing letter?