Listeners and perhaps advertisers may never see the physical radio station but they will develop a mental picture of the station based on what they hear over the air.
I became aware of this double world when I first visited a station I'd listened to for years. On the air it sounded crisp, clean, organized, but in person it was a place that never swept, vacuumed, dusted, nor practiced careful aim when pitching junk toward the waste basket. It had good engineering with bad housekeeping.
Building the on air image can employ radio's endless window on the imagination by describing non-existant architectural features such as our Upper Management Lounge (kitchen), Parade Review Stand (front porch), Executive Penthouse (desk and chair), The Vacuum Room (an ordinary computer work station), Multi-Purpose Hallway (totally imaginary), Wine Cellar (empty cardboard box).
KDX broadcasts from The Internet Building, but to puzzle the listener we sometimes admit that it's a re-purposed toolshed filled with lawn equipment.
Have you noticed a difference between your physical radio station and the image you present on the radio?
Your observation about perception vs. reality rings true with me in areas beyond radio stations.
TV stations which I have visited also have this characteristic. The news area is furnished with nice furniture and drapery and backdrops but look to the side or turn around and you see cables tangled all over the place and windowless concrete block walls. Now with green or blue screen backdrops and Chromakey the illusion is further enhanced.
On a personal experience note, I worked for a "world class" medical research department which published over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers each year. To the outside observer it must have appeared that we had neat uncluttered lab benches with sparkling equipment but such was not the case. We all shared a small area in the hospital basement and my desk was an end table squeezed between the bacteria culture oven and the placenta storage freezer. The whole area was a mess. Later, a fellow engineer was brought on board to do computer programming and he produced a great volume of quality work but his desk and office was littered with computer listing to the point where he won a local newspaper's "Messiest Office in the City" award.
Our director used to say "Intensive care is an idea, not a place" and he was right.
Neil
My office at the full power is a mess of papers, the studio is absolutely trashed with papers when I'm done with my airshift as well. I always pick up after myself in the studio though and on air the station sounds pretty polished. I end up getting in the zone and start tossing papers in all directions as I finish reading them.
My Part 15 stations were always the best liars though, cobbled together with lower grade gear and old PCs. On air they sounded HUGE and well equipped. Now the main part 15 AM is actually decently equipped but still sounds bigger than it really is.
Another way our experience departs from reality is memory drift vs. historic fact.
I am quite sure that one hour ago while grabbing some chicken thighs at the local Save-So-Much I was impressed by the new butcher's voice. He says he works weekends at Y98. This triggered my memory which is every bit as chopped up as the chicken parts.
Of what I'm not sure is whether I've ever worked at Y98. The attempt to reconstruct old memory took us to radio-locator where the current call letters of 98.1 FM happen to be KYKY, but that hasn't always been true. I tend to think the station had several call letters including KSLQ and KRCH (for "Arch"), but I can't prove it.
I'm beginning to think I didn't work for Y98 because I was too busy working for the stations on either side of it on the dial.