Several days ago, listener Mackie wrote:
I have now been in Wilmington for about 3 years and have enjoyed WHQR. In general, I enjoy the on air personalities, the local programming, and all WHQR has to offer. However, there are times I get extremely frustrated with errors, particularly during mid-day programming. I'm not sure why, but it seems the number of errors have increased as of late. By errors, I'm specifically referring to transitions between music bits/interviews/programming, etc. About two weeks ago, there was an instance when the horn intro blasted in the middle of an interview at least 5 times. Other times, program intros will begin playing while someone is still talking from another program. Why are there so many errors in transitions?
I wrote to Mackie that we are aware of an issue that arose the weekend of June 26-27. A power failure apparently caused some of our computers that switch from local to network to get out of synchronization with the network feed. As a result many of the announcements on those days were 8-10 seconds later than they should have been, and so overlapped the network. We corrected this by rebooting the computers in question, and the problems disappeared. If you hear of any others, it would help to let us know as exactly as possible when you heard them.
And now it’s time for some Feedback voicemail:
[AUDIO CLIP 1]
My name is Bennett Kennedy. . . I love Public Radio and what it does for the community here. I was just listening and saw that you had announced that Garrison Keillor was going to retire from Prairie Home Companion. Prairie Home Companion has been one of my favorite shows ever since I was even younger. I wasn't in the generation when radio shows were the major form of entertainment and what not and that was always the neatest thing to me, to have a radio show that was so entertaining and took my attention for so many hours. And for me, I eventually up reading all Garrison Keillor’s books. . . I'm not an older guy, I’m a younger guy but I do love listening to public radio. . . Thanks for all the stories, Mr. Keillor, you’re a true inspiration.
[AUDIO CLIP 2]
Hi, I was just listening to the Feedback this morning for the previous week’s broadcast. And I heard it and I do love the station. I like everything about it — the shows, the music. And I heard the young man’s comment about not having enough music for his generation on there and I'm wondering if maybe you might want to explore having someone do, like an experimental program on looking at the local music scene or what's happening nationally in music trends. Anyway, I thought he had a great comment. And you might look at that at as a way to grow our listenership. Thank you very much and keep up the good work. I really do enjoy the station.
We have a couple of suggestions for this listener. One is of course our Smooth Landings weeknights at 7 – George Scheibner does play some new artists, usually in the acoustic tradition. But a more cutting-edge solution might be All Songs Considered, Saturday afternoons at 4 o’clock on 91.3.
If you like the programming you hear on WHQR, please consider during our Summer Stealth campaign – if we’re successful, there will be no program interruptions. Public radio lives by listeners just like you. Give now at whqr.org.
We’d love to hear from you on Friday Feedback. You can always leave a message via email to feedback@WHQR.org. Our Feedback Phone is 910-292-9477. And thanks for your feedback.