Plus every listener powered station I've ever listened to has tons of shows I don't care about or even tolerate. Streaming doesn't have the same issue. Just as an example: your KEXP appears to play country, jazz, and electronic, reggae, and metal. I think a lot of people aren't going to be interested in all of those options.
On Friday afternoons KUTX has had a old school dance show.
I don't really listen to funk or disco but I always enjoyed the energy of that show on Fridays, and have come to associate it with the weekend and get excited when it's on
I'm not interested in everything KUTX plays, but I'm way more interested in the variety they offer and the chance to discover new artists like Adrian Quesada, JUNGLE, or Khruangbin, who I otherwise never would have discovered, than I am in whatever twenty year old mainstream dreck is on iHeartRadio's single-genre no DJ shuffle broadcast
I had the same experience when I regularly listened to wfmu. The human connection is a really wonderful quality of broadcast radio.