Last Saturday at seven minutes after 10 am we received this email from listener Harry:
WHERE IS CAR TALK?! And WHAT is this TOTAL religious CRAP you are foisting upon us!
The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is a live broadcast from King's College in Cambridge, England. It has been broadcast at 10 am on Christmas Eve ever since WHQR signed on in 1984. We have included this as one of several holiday-related specials scheduled at this time of the year, which have been publicized on the air and on our website for several days.
Listener Sarah Benjamin wrote:
I just want to take this opportunity to compliment the station on [last week's] program with Phil Furia at 1 o'clock. What a fascinating history of the background of old and current favorite holiday songs. It happened that I was doing some ironing and it really helped pass the time as well as enriching the day. Merry Christmas!
Listener Burt wrote:
Your extolling the merits of your new programming and the "eclectic" music is misguided. This is not what an audience of High Quality Radio is seeking, (HQR). The Friday night screeching guitars can be listened to on any one of a hundred other FM stations. Back to your roots, please.
Listeners Tom Reedy and Carol Kirby of Southport wrote:
The more classical music, the better. Thanks.
Barry and Susan Zimmerman of Supply wrote:
Wonderful programming. [We] would love to see more programming during the day with a bit less music (although we love the classical music as well).
One caller had a concern about our emergency warning on Tuesday of this week:
[AUDIO CLIP] My name is Michael McCarthy of Jacksonville, North Carolina . . . I'm currently listening to WHQR on your Jacksonville [translator] and you do not have the tornado warning that is in effect for this area. I like listening to WHQR but I heard the earlier tornado warning when you had one in Wilmington and it's important that your station, if you're going to broadcast in Jacksonville, also have the tornado warnings that are gonna be hitting for that area. Thank you for your time.
The Jacksonville extension Mr. McCarthy refers to is our low-power translator there. We’re looking into solutions to the problem he mentions. It’s not possible to have a separate emergency signal for a translator, so we would need to carry Jacksonville messages on our main channel. Stay tuned.
Sabah Dabby and Halina Williams-Dabby of Carolina Beach wrote:
[We] love Jemila!..afternoon [programming] is great ..very relaxing listening.
We’d love to hear from you on Friday Feedback, for your questions and comments, likes and dislikes about any aspect of the station. We’re on Facebook and Twitter. You can also send us feedback with an email message. And we have a new number for our Feedback line: 910-292-WHQR (9477). And thanks for your feedback.