Any thoughts or am I a delusional blurry eyed insomniac right now?
Wow, there are a lot of issues in there; geography, technology, demagraphics,...
I'm not from the DC area so I don't know, but I'll guess that like a lot of urban centers there are a wide range of FM stations in the city and the surrounding burbs. The problem for us in So.MD is that they often don't have very powerful signals so getting the stations here is rather difficult.
As for the format and play lists, I think it use to be the program director controlled that but it's my understanding that it's all contracted out. Owners bring in consultants that tell them what's going to sell ad time (supposedly what's going to get listeners). Once they select a format, they might actually by the entire program, the music is all preselcted and edited to fit the format. They leave queues for the in studio personality to do the talking. It use to be the DJ would do a lead in, introduce the song, when I listen to the radio now, I don't hear that. It's just the music.
Hell, some of the So MD stations don't even have an on air / in studio person, everything is pre-recorded. The engineer just queues things up and plays them. It's all about keeping costs down.