As I age, and I have indeed aged, things like reading newspaper have gotten harder. A set of glasses for walking around, another for working on the computer, yet another for reading. Oh, dear, now where *are* my reading glasses? Could take 10 or 15 minutes to track them down and, suddenly, there’s no real time to read anything.Ah, but the blessed radio can speak to you as you search, and as you do dishes, and as you straighten up or get ready for bed. But, here in southern Arizona, just what is there on the radio to listen to? Rush Lombough and rock-n-roll, and their equivalents, fill the air. I was spoiled, growing up in New York City, we had a choice of three 25-hour commercial news stations. There were also, depending on just where in the metro you were, up to 5 NPR stations and, the pièce de résistance, a Pacifica listener-sponsored station, the venerable WBAI. The vast wasteland of Arizona radio came as a bit of a shock when we started visiting Phoenix in 2006. Discovering that KJZZ is not just the local NPR outlet, but a darned good radio station in its own right, was an important factor in our choosing to settle in Phoenix in 2008. A fair substitute for the information rich airwaves of NYC, the station grows on you over the years. We became sustaining members almost immediately, and have increased our contribution rate as our finances allowed and, more recently, as the times demanded. KJZZ has our gratitude and our undying allegiance.

I should have known better than to go with the new NPR app that replaced NPR News. There was so much to love about it. Although I do Support my local NPR Station, I also like to browse, including locally produced programs from other parts of the country, which are not carried by my local station. That was easy to do in the old app. I simply brought up the station, and chose an on-demand program. These shows were displayed alongside the live streams. In addition , I could create a Favorites list, and even add items to a playlist for later use. In the new version, all of these features are gone. Now, the only way to get on-demand material from other stations seems to involve changing one’s favorite station; and, even if you do that, you then have to go to a separate On-Demand tab to get such material, and there are fewer choices of podcasts and topics. For instance, on the old app, I could go to WUNC (not my local station), and listen to podcasts from The People’s Pharmacy. Now, even by making that station my favorite, I found very few choices—and The People’s Pharmacy wasn’t one of them. Then, I had to reset my favorite station; then, to get back to where I was (if it wasn’t my local station), I had to go to Recently Streamed, and _hope to find it there. I hope I will grow to like the new app better, but don’t count on it. The reason I even gave it 4 stars is that I’m a huge fan of NPR.

There are several problems I’ve found with this app that are more of a nuisance than anything else. The first is there is no search function. I prefer to search for topics of my choice, especially when I have only limited time. This combined with the removal of a playlist capability is frustrating also. I use to enjoy programing my own listening. There are also some annoying (though minor) problems with the interface. At times, when clicking on a particular link, it doesn’t compute and instead opens a different link. At first I thought it was my sausage fingers, but no - it’s definitely a flaw in the app. Another function on the old app that is no longer available is the ability to save a list of favorite NPR radio stations from around the country. In the current version, it is possible to view “previously streamed” stations, but it only stores the last 5 stations streamed and boots one off of the list each time you listen to a new one (i.e. a 6th or 7th station). This is frustrating if you like to bounce around different NPR stations in other cities, as I do. This is also a hassle when the mis-click problem occurs because I lose my make-shift “favorites” list. I only reluctantly use this new version and preferred the old one. I wish they would fix these problems. I really cannot stand the NPR One app because of its limited random-only structure. As a result of these problems, I tend to just listen to other news and media or to go directly to the FM stations’ various apps and websites to listen to NPR instead.

The new NPR app seems designed like the NPR One app, which is really unfortunate. On the old NPR News app, I could create my own playlists, listening to these three stories but not that one. That functionality has all been removed from the new (and certainly not improved) NPR app. Sometimes I might want to listen to most of one day’s All Things Considered program, but would (for example) delete the sports stories because I just don’t care about them. With the change to this new NPR app, it’s not possible to curate my own NPR playlist. It’s frustrating that NPR’s “digital” department thinks that this is what their listeners want. The new NPR app is much less listener-friendly and makes it more difficult to seek out new/interesting content. It is still easy to find Morning Edition or All Things Considered—but it is very difficult to find the off-the-wall and obscure programs produced by smaller NPR member stations across the country. The old NPR News app was great for that. Ugh. I gave up on using NPR One years ago because I didn’t like how that program “decided” for me what it thought I would want to listen to. I was an active user of the NPR News app for years and years. I used the Playlist feature on a daily basis. It was a very frustrating morning to be forced into using this new NPR app that has taken away much of the functionality of the old NPR News app. Please bring the old NPR News app back!