So there's this fully functional radio station out there, staffed and broadcasting... how come there is no sign of it on the airwaves in the game?

Maybe it's the Classical radio? Dunno kinda feels like that place was half thought out.

Yeah, I went there the first time after I'd already freed Rex, and as soon as I walked in, the other two were doing their canned "woe is me, who is going to save poor Rex??" spiel... even though he was already sitting right there in the next room, having been saved by me days ago. I think they and that place are just there as a player-trap, to start you on the Rex Goodman salvation quest if you had somehow managed to wander down that way first, instead of straight to Boston.

It does seem a bit odd that WRVR isn't broadcasting. It is also rather odd that their broadcast tower is retracted and I've found no way to enable it.

Yeah, apparently they do live-acted "radio plays" but we never get to hear them. Maybe it was something Bethesda wanted to implement but didn't get a chance to.

That's The Institute broadcasting that actually.

Because they've been dead for decades and you were talking to dead people.

Since you can steal one of the employees of the radio station, it doesn't seem like they have any cohesion to produce radio plays.

I thought they just jacked the signal.

Indeed, they never say they are the classical radio, they say that it's hidden beneath or somehow in the signal, though that does allude to them being the source of the broadcast or perhaps having a synth planted that ensures that their hidden undercurrent signal is never noticed.

Maybe Bethesda will use it for some DLC.

If you blow up The Institute, Classical Radio goes offline permanently.

The person you find in the glowing sea tells you what that radio station is for. Its helps you become "institutionalised"