As your public media station, WHQR takes listener input very seriously and for a number of years we aired a regular feature called, “Friday Feedback”. We've heard from listeners who missed this short review of questions and comments along with updates about the station. From here forward, as we have listener voices and information to share, you'll find it all on our reboot of "Friday Feedback".
Here’s WHQR Station Manager, Kevin Crane.
Kevin Crane: We made a change to our on-air schedule in a while this week. We understand no change is going to please everyone, so we asked our listeners to let us know what they thought of swapping the 6 PM and 6:30 time slots between Market Place and The Daily. As expected, reactions went both ways. Margee Herring wrote “I have missed Marketplace as it had been airing just a tad too late for me. This is better!” Hugh Harrell says “Thanks very much for moving Marketplace back to its original 6:00 time. Now if we could only get Best of Car Talk on Saturday mornings at 10:00!” Thank you, Hugh, but I have bad news about Best of Car Talk. It’s now a 30 minute podcast instead of a 1 hour radio program.
But back to Market Place and The Daily, not everyone was happy about the swap. Allen & Lori Feezor write “We look forward to hearing Market Place every night and usually do so as we prepare dinner. We listen to The Daily occasionally depending on the topic IF we have come inside by then. In summer hours we are never in by 6p and may not even be in by 6:30p. In short we much prefer Market Place in the later time slot.” Nancy concurs, writing “Please undo the change to schedule The Daily following Marketplace. I’m not a fan of The Daily. My opinion may not mean much, but I felt compelled to say something.” Our listeners’ opinions do mean everything to us. In talking to our listeners, the single programming suggestion I heard most often was to put The Daily after Marketplace instead of before. We knew not everyone would be happy with it, but even fans of the Daily told us it would not affect their listening. We thought it was worth trying.
We also got a very nice comment on this week’s Coastline program. James writes “Thank you for the interview with Robert Lighthouse. I'm a huge fan of the Rusty Nail but didn't see the show as I was out of town. When Robert was describing the scene at the train station and said he almost cried, it actually made me cry. Next level journalism.”
We had another comment on our Facebook page where we announced that our news team had won a number of awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas last month. Among the comments, Jeannie said “I’m very grateful for the WHQR crew as they continue to explore the local stories in depth. Local government only works well in the light of day! Thanks for bringing light to our local issues!” That is our raison d’etre, as the French say, Jeannie. Thanks for putting it so succinctly.
I want to thank everyone who came out to Fermental Beer & Wine to celebrate WHQR’s 39th birthday with us on April 22nd. It was a fun celebration with staff and listeners. It was great to meet so many of you.
Thanks to everyone for your comments. We always love to hear from our listeners. We're on Facebook and Twitter, or write an email for Friday Feedback to feedback@whqr.org. We look forward to hearing from you.