Headlines

With the Wisconsin primary one week away, Donald Trump joined Sykes for an interview Monday. Sykes is a conservative backing Senator Ted Cruz. He told Trump, “Here in Wisconsin we value things like civility, decency, and actual conservative principles.” And the interview got nastier from there.

Perhaps Bernie Sanders' big win on Saturday was propelled by his domination on radio last week. According to Media Monitors, Sanders' campaign ran 3,358 spots and another 696 were run by the Healthcare Workers’ PAC National Nurses United For Patient Protection. That made his grand total for the last 10 days 4,054.

No succession plan or CEO search for Pandora. The abrupt change was announced in a press release Monday that founder Tim Westergren is back as CEO, replacing Brian McAndrews. McAndrews succeeded Joe Kennedy in September of 2013.

Shares of the Internet pure-play dropped nearly 10% following the CEO announcement so, at least for now, Wall Street is not looking at the change too positively. Westergren taking over follows a swirl of rumors about Pandora possibly being bought.

In his latest blog, immediately following the change at the top of Pandora, Cumulus/Westwood One CMO Pierre Bouvard asks the question, "Will Pandora be to streaming what MySpace was to social media?" Bouvard says Edison Research's latest Share of Ear study reveals why trouble is brewing for Pandora, specifically in the 18-24 demo.

The pharmacy chain surged to number two (from 18) on the Media Monitors weekly chart, airing just over 32,000 commercials on radio stations across the country last week. GEICO held on to the number one spot with 39,656. Rounding out the top five were AutoZone (30,105), Nissan Dealers (25,421), and McDonald's (25,007). Along with Walgreens, other big movers included Macy's (from 22 to 8) and Sprint (from 27 to 9).

In his latest blog, broadcast attorney David Oxenford reminds broadcasters not to go too far with jokes and pranks on Friday, April 1. He points out the FCC’s rule against broadcast hoaxes prevents stations from running any information about a “crime or catastrophe” on the air if the broadcaster knows the information to be false, it is reasonably foreseeable that the broadcast of the material will cause substantial public harm, and public harm is in fact caused. Oxenford writes, "Air a program deemed a hoax, and expect to be fined by the FCC."

The comments former CBS Radio CEO Dan Mason shared about Nielsen's Portable People Meter at the 2016 Radio Ink Hispanic Radio Conference have created a lot of buzz throughout the industry. SBS New York City Market Manager Eric Garcia interviewed Mason at the show. Garcia asked Mason the question about PPM. Because of how much feedback we've been getting on that story, we wanted our readers to hear Dan Mason's entire answer. LISTEN HERE

Country station Y96.9, Colorado Springs, announced Monday that its 10th annual Country Cares for St. Jude Kids radiothon raised more than $101,000 to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The on-air fundraiser took place on February 25-26 from 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. each day.

Automotive News reports that the month of March could be one of the strongest months ever for the U.S. auto industry. Sales are expected to increase at least 7 percent from a year ago.