6. OF COURSE the only guy with a ham radio is the art bell looney with a shotgun, rather than some old retired fart from the FCC.
I'll take demonization of ham's over gun owners any day of the week. Especialy on network telivision.
And yes, there should be some analog radio traffic, or someone with a shortwave, however, that would go against the theme of "we're on our own". Being in the dark just like the townspeople is part of the experiance. How many cities, two, five, ten, twenty, fifty?
I think a good middle ground would have been hearing some forgein SW stations screaming bloody murder, obviously about the nukes, and you hear "United-ah Statesu" or something similar a few times, but no one in town speaks Japanese or whatnot.
That way there's no unrealistic "last people on earth" factor in the plot, but in practical terms, they might as well be. You could even make the Japanese shortwave news be a dark-humor running gag. People listen so they know there's an outside world, but it does them no good. Perhaps someone has a Berlitz Japanese book, and after exhaustive study, the town's "expert" just comes up with worthless translations.
"Uh, he's saying 'The Americans are pickeling thier bananas in winter this year?'"