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Last week we told you about an opinion piece writer Sonny Bunch crafted for the Washington Post demanding the radio industry start paying artists for the music it played over the airwaves. Apparently Forbes contributor Christopher Versace didn't take kindly to that demand and took up some valuable space on the Forbes website to defend radio's honor.

It's clear musicFIRST has been lobbying the mainstream media to take up its case against the radio industry. They have found a willing ally at The Washington Post. An opinion piece in The Post written by Sonny Bunch starts out with this sentence, "Every time you listen to the radio you’re partaking in the exploitation of musicians."

Bill Stakelin is a very well-known name around the radio industry. We recently spoke to Stakelin for our special feature on the 1996 Telecommunications Act. His company back then, Regent Communications, was right in the thick of the activity when the buying floodgates opened (he eventually sold to Randy Michaels). Stakelin will be featured in an upcoming issue of Radio Ink about the '96 Act. We took the opportunity during that interview to get his views on the radio industry today. Here's what he had to say.

Cumulus/Westwood One Senior VP of Content & Programming Mike McVay says KRBE Houston Program Director Leslie Whittle is a role model and a model programmer. "Leslie has been able to accomplish with one radio station what takes most operators a large cluster. She manages a highly talented morning team, is blessed with great talent all day, connects to the market, and is intuitive as to what music to play." Whittle will appear on Radio Ink's 2016 Best Program Directors in America list, which comes out on May 9.

More eyeballs have viewed our stories on this issue and more comments posted than any other story we've run over the past several years. Edison Research's report that consumers change stations on radio 22 times per commute was quickly turned into a White Paper by Pandora looking to boost its credibility with advertisers. The radio industry returned volley with several articles claiming the Edison research was flawed and providing its own data pointing out just how strong radio has been over the years and remains today. We've put it all together for you here in this story in case you've missed any of it.

It was the lowest quarterly radio deal volume since 2012 according to the folks at Kagan. The top radio deal of the quarter was the $10.0 million sale of non-commercial KUHA-FM in Houston followed by another non-commercial transaction, the $8.0 million sale of FM stations KPLI, KPLU, KPLI and KVIX as well as seven translators and one translator construction permit in Seattle from Pacific Lutheran University to University of Washington.

One of radio's iconic brands suffered another body blow Thursday. Cumulus has laid off most of the news staff at KGO and additional layoffs were made at KFOG. Cumulus has decided to take KGO in an entirely new direction, away from news. Rich Walcoff has been at KGO for nearly 32 years. He tells Radio Ink, "I Don't know the exact number but there is no more KGO news department as we knew it. KFOG also dumped a bunch of on air talent. Sad day for Bay Area radio and much fine talent."

Perhaps not, according to a letter attorney David Oxenford has written to the FCC. Apparently Pandora isn't really sure it wants to own KXMZ in South Elder, South Dakota, a station it purchased from Jeff Warshaw's Connoisseur Media for $600K. The main reason Pandora wanted to own the station was to skirt around the ASCAP fees by saying it should be charged the same fees as radio stations -- not a pure-play streaming company -- now that it was a broadcaster. That did not work out. The Oxenford letter says Pandora is "reevaluating its broadcast strategy."

We could be in the early stages of big Clear Channel AM stations battling with smaller mom and pop AM stations that are looking to serve their local communities when the sun goes down. It's an issue the NAB does not take a position on because there are many stations on both sides of this issue.

The two biggest problems with radio advertising have always been too many ads and too many bad ads. Now, one of radio's biggest cheerleaders -- on the agency side -- is trying to solve problem number two. Horizon CEO Bill Koenigsberg has always been a fan of radio and now he's forming a new audio creative and production division called Wordsworth & Booth.