I doubt regional Australia would agree with you. People stuck with maybe a Triple M/Hit combo, or worse a BoG combo.
Whereas small town NZ have a suite of stations offering all sorts of formats (Breeze, The Rock, The Sound, Coast, More FM…the list goes on).
Same in small city US and Canada. All the formats covered.
I actually don’t care if they’re networked. I listen to The Breeze or Rebel here wherever I am.
Even capital city stations here are mostly networked now so what’s the difference?