I once had a book by Peter Hunn that started an FM in New York State decades ago. He and his wife lived in and operated the station from a 'converted' garage kit from a lumber store. This was prior to computers. In the book he explained he selected a format, played records, typed commercials on index cards and operated 'bare bones' for three years or more before the 'confinement' finally got to them. He later sold the station. If I understand things correctly he dabbled in ownership over the years and taught broadcasting.
If I recall correctly, Bob Rule is the sole owner and operator of KPIN in Pinedale, Wyoming. Being the only station on the dial, he has everyone listening. He operates from a 'shopping mall' of sorts. With the extreme weather, I have noted in my travel in such areas, a builder will erect a building that can contain several retail shops and a few 'business offices' with an indoor hallway in the center as well as an outside entrance to these businesses. Bob rents a 10 by 10 office that opens to the hallway. The station is in that room. When I visited, he had a short tower at a motel (traded for a few spots each day) and connected to a dedicated phone line to the studio.
At that time he kept a single employee on the payroll. I suppose that it became difficult to find a person he could trust, so he simply ran it himself. The station is computer driven.
In such a small town where you can know everyone in your 60 dbu by name, advertisers are quite familiar with the station. In fact, many have learned how to produce their own commercial. So, if Bob isn't around, and the client knows how to do their own spot, they known where the spare key can be found so they can simply go in and do the spot. This is no cash cow by any means, just a really small town radio station that gets by because the owner is a one man show.
KPIN offers state, national and international news via a subscription and computer connection, offers local news, local road conditions, weather reports on the half hour and a daily buy, sell and trade show. When I visited the music was a mix of adult contemporary oldies and country, leaning heavily on the AC side. The computer hard drive was so small, the station played only about a 12 hour music library. I suspect with mp3 and cheap hard drives these days, the music has expanded greatly. With his basic package for advertising and the number of spots I heard, I'm guessing he had about 2 dozen advertisers in the early years, say 2001 or 2002.
The big problem for the station was finding a way to tap out of town ad dollars (you have to travel to bigger towns for some things). The problem is, it is about 90 minutes to 2 hours each way at the posted speed limit to get there. It seems Pinedale does lots of retail trade, however. There are two weekly papers that are really quite large. In fact, they'd almost rival a big city weekday paper in number of pages and certainly more space sold in advertising. If I recall, my June visit in about 2001 or 2002, the weekly was about 32 full size pages in color too. Granted, tourists are a factor in the community, but still, that's a big paper for a town of about 1,400 back then.
A link:
http://www.pinedaleonline.com/kpin/
The one person or husband and wife team running a station is pretty rare but I suspect it is becoming more common.