If your favorite TV show or radio program airs weekdays at 2 PM, the FCC has an important message for you. In order to test its new emergency alert system, the FCC has announced it is shutting down all communications on television and radio to test out its new Emergency Alert System on Wednesday, November 9th. While the system has been tested in various states previously, this will be the first all-inclusive, national test.

Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has been taking heavy criticism over a joking reference to Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren‘s physical appearance, including from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The cast of ABC’s The View weighed in on the controversy today, and took Brown’s side. The discussion included a loose grasp of the facts, and an interpretation of Brown’s comment, from Whoopi Goldberg, that even the most imaginative press flack couldn’t have thought up.

You’d think that, with the sheer amount of advice and media training candidates are given, they’d have learned, by now, to think just a little bit more before they offer sound bites that will then be repeated over and over, particularly as they gear up for a campaign or election.

First, some background: During the Massachusetts Senate debate earlier this week, the moderator referenced the fact that Republican Senator Scott Brown had posed nude in college in order to pay for his education. The debate participants were then asked they had done to help pay for their respective schools. Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren reacted to the moderator’s comments by joking that “I kept my clothes on” while in college.

No matter what, you can bet Twitter will be involved. According to the Miami Herald, ex-CNN anchor Rick Sanchez will be back this fall–on the radio in South Florida–calling football games for the FIU Golden Panthers. “Huge name move for FIU,” write David Neal and Justin Azpiazu, wondering if the at times well over the top style of Sanchez might “inject…games with the almost campily dramatic seriousness he did to shoot ‘em up Miami of the late 1980s-early 1990s” when Sanchez was an anchor at Miami’s WSVN.

Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, took to the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to clear up a common misconception about NPR: That most of its audience leans to the left. In fact, Inskeep says, most of the media platform’s radio listeners identify as “middle of the road” or “conservative.”

On Laura Ingraham‘s radio show, Wisconsin State Representative Republican Michelle Litjens discussed the threat she received from her Democratic colleague Representative Gordon Hintz, where he told her she was “f—ing dead” after her vote supporting Governor Walker’s budget plan. Hintz has already apologized for what he described as an “outburst” and Litjens has accepted the apology.

In Wisconsin, Democratic state senators are boycotting a vote on a plan to eliminate union rights of public employees, instead hoping to force state Republicans to negotiate a compromise. In response to this conflict, Rush Limbaugh passionately explained to a union-defending caller why liberalism is horrible and if it has seeped into unions, then unions are bad too.

Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh was confronted by a caller who alleged Rush’s criticism of President Obama has been racist. The caller even alleged that Rush hides behind using the term “satire” when in fact Rush’s attempts at comedy are really just instances of his racism. However, when the caller could not provide a specific racist example, Rush unloaded on him.

In the ongoing “feud” between “King of All Media” Howard Stern and the self-designated challenger to that throne, CNN‘s Piers Morgan, Morgan appeared on Stern’s radio show in an apparent attempt to end one war, but to potentially open battles on a new front. Dismissing some of his cable competition as boring and predictable, Morgan declared, “I don’t have to turn on Rachel Maddow or Glenn Beck to know what they’re going to be saying.”

Howard Stern is well aware that Piers Morgan is trying to start a publicity-generating feud with him, and Stern doesn’t mind participating, but he does worry that Piers is embarrassing himself with his constant Tweeting and with his delusions of grandeur. In preparation of Piers appearing on Stern’s radio show Monday, Stern spent some time today alternating between ridiculing Piers and giving him advice on how to improve his show.

What a difference a few weeks makes. It seems like only yesterday that new CNN host Piers Morgan and Howard Stern were best of friends celebrating Morgan’s great ratings with Stern as his guest. However, with Morgan’s ratings tumble, Stern is now unleashing his true thoughts about Morgan who he finds a “little bit strange”

Today on his radio show, Glenn Beck was angry with President Obama for praising protesters in Egypt, so long as they are peaceful, yet for being so dismissive in the past of peaceful Tea Party supporters in America. However, Beck was even angrier with mainstream journalists for failing to draw connections in their coverage of the Egyptian uprising and concluded journalists are “so dead inside.”

In response to the latest accusations that Glenn Beck uses harmful rhetoric, this time of the anti-semitic variety, Beck responded on his radio show that a just-released documentary he produced on the dangers of Iran, conclusively disproves any charges of anti-semitism against him.

Radio host Mark Levin is fed up with claims that heated political rhetoric of the sort found on talk radio shows like his are in some way to blame for the shooting in Arizona that left six dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords injured.

And Levin is putting his money where his mouth is by threatening to take MSNBC hosts and contributors to federal court for accusations tying Levin to Loughner’s rampage.

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck and his crew had some fun responding to Joe Scarborough‘s verbal assault. Co-host Pat Gray comedically played offense making fun of Scarborough, and referring to Morning Joe as “morning cup of tea or whatever he calls his stupid show.” Gray summed up Scarborough’s rant as simply him being jealous and obsessed with Beck’s success. Beck though was eager to take the high road and focused on disputing some of Scarborough’s accusations.

If radio really is the theater of the mind, then WGN-AM listeners were given a rather unfortunate show recently. As the station interviewed Congressman Danny Davis to discuss his campaign to become Chicago’s next mayor, the conversation was punctured by one of the most distinct sounds known to ears: that of a toilet flushing.

MSNBC‘s tough-talking Ed Schultz discussed on his radio show this past week why his television show never features any Republican guests. Yet whether it’s because Schultz is sick of them, or they were never fond of him to begin with is unclear, since Schultz offers up both possibilities as explanations for his show being dominated by only liberal guests.

It would be hard to find a media personality who is more experienced than Rush Limbaugh at carefully constructing a convincing argument, before quickly shattering any of its impact with over-the-top hyperbole. Case in point: today Rush was justifiably angry with the determination of elected officials to fulfill a non-existent mandate to pass as much legislation as possible before the end of the year. This, according to Rush, is the equivalent of Congress sexually violating every American and is also where many listeners might focus on the rape and forget what issue it was that originally upset Rush.

On the day when Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was granted bail and liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore proudly declared his intention to contribute money to Assange’s release so that Wikileaks can be kept “alive and thriving,” it should come as no surprise Rush Limbaugh would be apopletic. Limbaugh’s headline-seeking shot at liberals was to say [...]

Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips recently hosted a radio program where he declared that Americans who do not own property have less of a stake in the community and suggested, in the past, it made sense to deprive such citizens of the right to vote. The tone-deaf statement is not significant because it represents the view of the Tea Party at large (it doesn’t), but is important because it evidences a serious problem for the movement: without a formal hierarchy, various “leaders” associated with the Tea Party can quickly damage the larger brand with their absurd comments.

Mediaite has learned Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are being dropped from their Philadelphia radio station, WPHT 1210 (The Big Talker), in January.

The station is a CBS affiliate, and Philadelphia is the fourth largest radio market.

Former Dean of the White House Press Corps Helen Thomas is making news again after granting her first broadcast interview since her controversial retirement (she first broke her silence in a brief interview with Mediaite). While printed accounts of the 35-minute radio interview have focused on her inflammatory remarks, subsequent apology, and her opinions of flashpoint politicians Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin, they ignore a portion of the interview that packs an emotional wallop.

Legendary ex-White House correspondent Helen Thomas has largely been quiet since June, when the 90-year-old reporter abruptly retired after making waves with a statement disparaging Israel (in case you forgot, here’s what she said: “Tell ‘em to get the hell out of Palestine…. They should go home… [to] Poland, Germany.”) Today, though, Thomas told her side of the story.

adio journalist Pia Beathe Pederson left her job at NKR, Norway’s public broadcasting company, citing that “nothing important has happened.”

The Daily Beast took a stab at one of the harder sciences of the media world last night, publishing a list of the top 25 most influential right-wing journalists in America. It is a pretty comprehensive list, with all the usual suspects making appearances, and both conservative and libertarian columnists taken into consideration. “What unites them all, broadly,” writes columnist Tunku Varadarajan, “is their influence on the public debate, and their place on the political spectrum—which is somewhere to the right of center.”