Our Long Holiday Podcast Nightmare Is Over

Greetings! For many of you reading, this will be your first day back on the job after a leisurely two week or so holiday break. Welcome back to your desk!

As many of our listeners noted on Facebook, Twitter and in emails, the rebroadcast episodes from the last two weeks haven't been appearing on their web pages on our site. We checked with the WBUR tech folks, and they determined that came from a missed compatibility issue between our new audio players (which are really great) and the structure of our site at large. That quirk has been fixed, so all the audio lives again on rebroadcast episode pages (like our two hours on this Monday, January 6).

The other issue we got a lot of feedback on during the holiday was the missing podcast upload for those same missing rebroadcasts. That gap had a lot to do with the way our NPR parent people scoop up the audio of our episodes and put them out into the digital ether for iTunes and other podcast subscription services. Seeing as the audio for our rebroadcasts wasn't getting posted, it seems that the scooping-up process didn't happen. Many of our listeners around the world depend on that podcast to keep up with On Point. During the rebroadcast holiday intercession, they weren't able to do that and for that, we are deeply, deeply sorry.

The good news is that, after a quick fix, audio for rebroadcasts is now displaying correctly on our website just as it does for new broadcasts.  The bad news is that we still do not have a solution for including rebroadcasts in our podcast feed.  We won’t burden you with the technical specifics, but rest assured, we are working to find a solution for this issue.  In the meantime, in order to listen to a rebroadcast, you will need to visit the On Point website and either listen online or download the mp3 manually. It's not perfect, but it's a start.
-- Nick Andersen | On Point Web Producer