This is WHQR's "Friday Feedback," featuring listener questions and comments — and updates about your public media station.
Here's WHQR Station Manager Kevin Crane:
Kevin Crane: We got a question from Miriam Brooks about streaming on her smart speaker. Miriam asks “When I try to listen via streaming/TuneIn, I sometimes get the response that WHQR "is not available right now." It's not a problem with my WiFi or my device. There’s no problem with other NPR stations I try. Why is WHQR's streaming so unreliable?”
That is a question that’s been vexing us for quite some time. I sometimes get the response “WHQR Live on TuneIn is not available right now” when I try to listen with my Alexa smart speaker. For whatever reason, it seems that the third time I ask Alexa to play WHQR, it usually works, but it’s still frustrating. I contacted TuneIn to ask them about the issue, and they suggested that I modify my request to say “Alexa, play WHQR on TuneIn” which does sometimes work when the simple “play WHQR” doesn’t, but not always.
We’re continuing to work on this problem. One interesting bit of information I did learn is that your Amazon account keeps track of all your requests to Alexa, so you can login to your account, select the request, hear a recording of yourself and report that the request did not go through. We live in interesting times.
We got some very nice feedback about our news coverage as well. Kelly Kenoyer covered the city of Burlington, North Carolina’s agreement to prevent forever chemicals from being dumped in the Haw River, which feeds into the Cape Fear river. Her coverage elicited the responses “Great job on the story. You explained very complex problems in a way that everyone can understand. I so appreciate you covering this story.” And “Thanks for this important story Kelly - please keep following” from another listener. And we even got a response to a story by our summer intern James Watson, who covered the issues around the Student Voice policy the New Hanover Board of Education passed last year. “Thank you for your continued coverage of the decision making happening in New Hanover County Schools which impacts young people.” And our reporter Camille Mojica got a shout out from a listener, who wrote “Hi Camille, I heard you on WHQR yesterday and I thought how awesome it was to hear a Latina on the radio in North Carolina. So hey, que pasa, y bienvenida”
We love to hear from our listeners in any language. We're on Facebook and Twitter, or write an email for Friday Feedback to feedback@whqr.org. Thanks for your feedback, and we look forward to hearing from you.