BBC Radio not using Alexa preferred speakers

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 28, 2019
34 replies
8877 views

I have the BBC skill set up in Alexa and if I ask Alexa to 'play BBC Radio 2' it plays from my Echo Spot rather than the SONOS speakers that I set up as my preferred speakers in Alexa groups. If I disable the BBC app, then Alexa gives me a message saying something abut the previously enabled app is disabled do I want to enable it. To make it work I have to say 'Alexa play BBC Radio 2 in the Sitting Room'.

If I say 'Alexa play Virgin Radio' (or any other radio station/music request) it plays through the SONOS speakers.

I know this might be more of an Alexa question than a SONOS question but I'm asking just in case any of you SONOS experts have come across this and know a fix!

Edit: I did do a search and found nothing, but now I've posted I see that this question has come up before although the answer is to do what I'm doing ie add 'in the sitting room' or 'from TuneIn' to the command, which isn't a really great solution.

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Best answer by mvosloo

If you don't include 'from TuneIn', then Alexa will default to the BBC Skill when requesting a BBC radio station which doesn't support the Preferred Speaker setting. You are correct in saying that this isn't a Sonos issue.

Its a bit ridiculous really but I did find a sort of solution by creating a routine in Alexa for those who might be interested:

Routine goes like this:

When this happens | Voice: Alexa, play radio two
Action | Play: BBC Radio 2 | From: TuneIn
From: Living Room Spot

The key is obviously to say Radio 2 not BBC Radio 2. As the Preferred speakers are SONOS speakers on the Living Room Spot, Radio 2 is played through them.

Show previous replies

A

Acer99

Avid Contributor I

Is this working for anyone? It used to work great and then the BBC policy change broke it. I’ve followed the various work arounds since which did help but I cannot get this to work at all now. I’ve tried deleting the BBC and Sonos skills on the Alexa app again. I’m trying to get the echo to get the 3 grouped Sonos speakers to play a BBC station. Asking echo to play ‘BBC radio 2 from the BBC’ results in echo announcing ‘playing bbc radio 2. BBC sounds’. And then silence. Any help to get this useful feature working again would be appreciated. My ‘playback option’ is set to ‘always’. Thanks.

J

John B

It's still working for me, but I did notice recently that a couple of my Echo Dots had gone AWOL from the Alexa groups where they were supposed to be controlling things. I suggest you check whether your Alexa groups are still as they should be.

A

Acer99

Avid Contributor I

Thank you for your reply. Knowing that it was still possible gave me the motivation to try (yet) again. Groups all looked good. Disabled/re-enabled BBC skill. No luck. Disabled/re-enabled Sonos and success! Great to have this working again. Hopefully it will remain stable for some time.

DGR1

Chromatic Producer I

Hi all. I’ve been using Echo devices and Sonos speakers for some time, including the period of BBC-induced tedium that broke standard default speaker functionality with BBC Sounds.

For ages I’ve been using the ‘Alexa, ask BBC to play Radio 6’ workaround to send music to Sonos speakers as opposed to playing on the Echo device itself.

Anyway, my daughter was listening to Radio 1 the other day through Sonos. I asked how she started the station, and she said that she just asked for it with ‘Alexa, play BBC Radio 1’. I’ve now tried it, and it works. This is the standard command that had been broken for ages!

I notice that the BBC Sounds skill had an update 10 days ago. Might have done something?

Apols if this is old news, but thought I’d share in case it’s not 😀

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