College radio stations fear budget cuts could silence them - Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

College radio stations, which have long given a first break to little-known musicians and offered a voice for idiosyncratic viewpoints, are at risk of losing their identity to budget-cutters, a grass-roots campaign warns. More than 350 college radio stations are going to the airwaves Tuesday to fight against a steady stream of universities nationwide that have been selling or transferring their FM licenses to non-student operations, usually in response to tighter budgets and a rapidly changing media industry. In May, Rice University in Houston completed the sale of its KTRU-FM tower, license and bandwidth for $9.5 million. Sales are pending at Nashville's Vanderbilt University for $3.35 million and at the University of San Francisco for $3.75 million. They echo similar transactions in the past few years involving about a dozen student-run stations, including those at Texas Tech University, Augustana College in South Dakota and Chattanooga State Technical Community College in Tennessee.