At the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, KDAN—broadcasting at 91.5 FM to Marshall and the western shore of Tomales Bay—faded into static. Gone was the eclectic lineup of everything from folk to rockabilly to Dixieland to bossa nova, leaving Jeff Cotton, a straight-shooting sound engineer who has built small-town radio stations across the West, to mourn the silence. KDAN’s low-power signal emanated from a pump shed on the Barinaga Ranch, where Mr. Cotton, who lives in northeastern California in a valley called Surprise, stored repeaters, a Raspberry Pi and other broadcast equipment. When his nonprofit, Open Sky Radio, purchased the dormant station in 2020 for $5,000, the frequency was on the verge of losing its Federal Communications Commission license altogether. Four years later, with operating costs no longer tenable, Mr. Cotton began looking for a local owner. He fielded queries from a few of West Marin’s would-be D.J.s and hobbyists. “We would have pretty much given the license to somebody worthy,” he said. “There were just a lot of tire kickers, people sniffing around, asking a lot of questions but none of them came up with an offer.” To Mr. Cotton, the loss of KDAN is a loss to the community; the 10-watt FM station could have been a beacon for West Marin’s bohemian demimonde or served as a “voice for the voiceless,” offering an alternative to 320-watt KWMR and 110,000-watt KQED. “We didn’t want someone who wants to just play his favorite party jams,” he said. “We’re looking for something with more purpose.” Performing rights organizations charge about $2,000 a year in royalties, based on broad listener population tiers that lump KDAN’s 800-person audience with stations serving up to 25,000 listeners. Dislodged from the airwaves, KDAN will vanish from the F.C.C.’s books in June. Once it’s canceled, it may be a decade or so before a new filing window opens that allows anyone to resurrect it. But given the station’s limited reach—tucked in a “little donut hole in Marshall” so that it doesn’t interfere with the larger stations—an eventual comeback seems improbable, Mr. Cotton predicts. “If a station like KWMR is considered a very small, rural broadcaster,” he said, “and it serves tens of thousands, what does that make a station that serves just a few hundred people? We’re in the absurd category, I think.” For those who miss KDAN’s signature sound, a near-identical stream is still available on jiveradio.org, though, as Mr. Cotton points out, KDAN added local flair with tunes from Marin County legends like Dan Hicks, the Youngbloods, Bonnie Raitt and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.