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Is there a battle brewing among AM broadcasters thanks to The FCC? Those struggling to survive want the FCC to give them every opportunity to make a comeback in this era of intense competition for both ears and ad dollars. Broadcasters who are now running some of the most successful radio brands may have to pay the price for the little guys to have a chance to thrive again. At least that's what the FCC has up its sleeve.

The Sherman & Tingle Show with Brian Sherman and Steve Tingle will debut October 31 on Hubbard Radio's Rocker WDRV-FM in Chicago. They replace The Morning Drive which is hosted by Pete McMurray, Scott Miller and Kathy Voltmer.

Salem Media Group, announced Monday that Bill Bennett will step back from the microphone in hosting Bill Bennett's Morning in America program starting Monday, April 4. Bennett will maintain his presence in the morning by shifting to Senior Correspondent, producing a daily Making America Work series.

(by Wayne Ens) I’m angry at radio’s resolve to take a back seat to digital. While I don’t deny the powerful role of digital in marketing, digital budgets should be coming from print, direct mail, and yellow pages, not from radio. In fact, radio should be perfectly positioned for revenue increases.

Radio executives were quick to react to Pandora's Friday white paper which quotes a recent Edison Research study that says consumers switch radio stations 22 times during their commutes. Of course, the automobile is extremely important to radio because it's where most listening is done. Cumulus/Westwood One CMO Pierre Bouvard was the first to strike back at Pandora in his latest blog. Bouvard says Pandora is clueless about listening in the car and barely anyone listens to them while driving.

The FCC's enforcement bureau says it has reached a $540,000 settlement with Cumulus over a sponsorship identification issue at WOKQ (97.5 FM) in Dover, New Hampshire. The station broadcast 178 announcements in support of the Northern Pass hydro-electric energy project without identifying the sponsor of those announcements, in this case a company with a financial interest in the project. This is the largest payment in FCC history for a single-station violation of the Commission’s sponsorship identification laws.

CEO Tim Westergren and his new team get a very long profile piece by John Titlow in Fast Company as Westergren dives into his new role as CEO replacing Brian McAndrews. The article, entitled "Inside Pandora's Plan To Reinvent Itself—And Beat Back Apple And Spotify," details why Westergren has his work cut out for him.

We have dueling answers on that question as you'll read in this story. Just like we've been getting on the FCC's plan to allow smaller AMs, on the same frequency as Clear Channel AMs, to operate at night. You could argue that if you lived in Florida and you still love to listen to WGY in Albany, just pull up iHeartRadio on your phone. Does anybody really care anymore about driving across the country at night listening to the same "staticy-sounding" AM station as you cross several states?

Kelley was well-known to Chicago listeners as an on-air personality with WGCI-FM. In October, 2015, iHeartMedia also gave her dual PD duties with WGCI and WKSC-FM. She was 45 years old.

(by Matt Sunshine) If you’re in sales, you know it’s extremely important to close deals, right? That’s kind of an easy question, but I ask it because it seems as though many salespeople think their job is to have a lot of business in “pending.” When I ask salespeople how things are going, what I typically hear is, “I got a lot out there.”