Gen Xer here…

It didn’t use to be this bad. The FCC (and ftc) dropped the bag (regulatory capture), letting clear channel gobble up stations.

When I was a kid had a couple great local stations back in the day. One was a highschool station that local bands could send in cassette tapes and they would play them on Tuesdays. They had a Mosh Monday curated by local metalhead kids/young adults (there was vocational training at the radio station in evening classes).

Even the commercial channels were better. Not great or anything, but they had a lot more variety.