BBC suddenly starts playing during local radio station’s streaming 😞


No changes at all on my end, but last week while listening to our regular local radio station (KBCS 91.3) via TuneIn, my Sonos system will suddenly play the BBC instead of the radio station feed.

Right in the middle of the music it will just switch over. 😖
KBCS is a local station that plays mostly music. I don’t even have the BBC on my list of stations. 

The station’s live stream is just fine. If I listen to the station via TuneIn on my phone it’s fine. 

But on my Sonos it suddenly plays the BBC. 
it doesn’t do this to any other radio station I listen to. 
 

I removed The Station from my presets. I restarted my router. Still doing it. 

Very depressing as we listen to this station for many hours a week and can’t get the signal clearly on the radio tuner.

Thanks
 

 

 


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14 replies

So, it’s hard to tell from your post, but i could see at least two potential possibilities.

First, you could have an alarm set up, either in Sonos, or some third party app, that is kicking the channel over to the BBC, rather than your local radio station. That would certainly explain why this is happening only on the Sonos, and not when you’re streaming via your phone. 

Second, you could have someone else connected to your wifi who has a Sonos controller, and they’re messing with you. Not impossible, just unlikely. Again, this would explain why it’s happening on Sonos and not elsewhere. 

But to get to the real bottom of the issue, your best bet is to submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of having the station change and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

I would expect that if you do it within 10 minutes, there should be information in the log file that’s part of that diagnostic that would identify where the command is coming from to change the station on you. 

 

 

Yeah the first two suggestions you make are unlikely—unless im

hacked. But Sonos controller will still show the picture of the radio station while it’s playing the BBC! I restart and it goes back to the station until it switches over to the BBC again.

so far it doesn’t do this with any other radio stations I live stream. 
I will definitely take up your suggestion on the system diagnostics thank you!

Yea, the image you see is a trailing indicator, and not really a 1 to 1 reflection of what is actually playing. 

It would be challenging (but not totally impossible, I suspect) to hack you, since Sonos basically only responds to devices on the same subnet , but again, that diagnostic would help identify that, as it should have the details of what started/changed the playback. I’d honestly give the hacking theory a less than 1% chance of playing out, but it seems more likely that there’s some other command being sent to the speaker to change the station it’s connected to. Please update the thread when you get done with Sonos CS, I’m sure I’m not the only one interested :)

It’s possible that there is an issue with the TuneIn stream sent to SONOS and they flip to the BBC at odd times. If this is the case there may be additional complaints … somewhere. TuneIn and/or your station may not be aware of any problems. Contacting them might help.

A work around might be to use another streaming service, such as MyTuner or Sonos Radio. You can search for Stations in the SONOS controller.

Contact the station. They may give you a URL. You can then use a PC or Mac controller to add the station URL.

Thanks everyone. I will try this again tomorrow.

I don’t think it’s the tune in stream because it doesn’t do this on the app!

 

Sonos only gives me one option to play the station and that is from TuneIn.

Note that TuneIn uses a different server to feed Sonos than they do for their own app, or their web presence, so it is possible to occur in one area, and not the other. 

After fiddling, resetting my modem, uninstalling and reinstalling my Sonos app and contacting Xfinity, my system is now partially unusable. 
One local music radio station switches to the BBC. Another local station stops and restarts constantly. Like every 5 minutes. I can’t play Hearts of Space (ambient music show) it just stops. Other radio stations stop and restart.
 

Most music services (as far as I can tell) and Audible are unaffected. 

Any ideas? 😞


 

After fiddling, resetting my modem, uninstalling and reinstalling my Sonos app and contacting Xfinity, my system is now partially unusable. 
One local music radio station switches to the BBC. Another local station stops and restarts constantly. Like every 5 minutes. I can’t play Hearts of Space (ambient music show) it just stops. Other radio stations stop and restart.
 

Most music services (as far as I can tell) and Audible are unaffected. 

Any ideas? 😞

For clarification, you mention that you have an Xfinity ‘modem’… but is it just a modem, or is it a combined ‘router’ and are there any other wireless access points anywhere else in your Home network, or is there just the one central network WiFi device only?

Are there any separate network switches anywhere in the mix and are they managed, or unmanaged?

How are you presently connecting your Sonos devices to the LAN, it via SonosNet? If not, have you considered trying ‘SonosNet mode’ for your products by wiring one device to your router.. and introducing the other things that normally go with that type of setup, such as ensuring the WiFi and SonosNet channels do not overlap …maybe even removing the WiFi credentials altogether, that’s if you are not using any portable Sonos devices.

My thoughts are that improving your network device communication/discovery across the LAN itself may perhaps go some way to resolve the type of issues you are seeing.

Thanks Ken. 
as a reasonably technology savvy person I realize I’m not paying attention enough to all these details. In other words I’ve got the system to work, then I successfully upgraded to S2 but still fly by the seat of my pants.

I have a Xfinity modem plugged into the cable.

plugged into the modem is a DLink with four ports. 

The DLink  is connected to the Wi-Fi router.

The Sonos boost is also connected to the Wi-Fi router.

then far away in another room I have the Sonos connector connected to my stereo system.

 

there is also a play one upstairs  and another older Sonos speaker in my basement that is not supposed to work with S2 but somehow it does. ??

This problem with my Internet going in and out and in and out and my radio stations either switching over to other radio stations or not playing at all all happened in the last couple weeks.  I installed my new S2 system months ago. I don’t know what Sonos net is but I can look it up.

While I’ve been standing here next to my modem and router, narrating into my phone, my system has restarted twice. It hasn’t done that for an hour. The thing is I’ve turned on my Sonos, turned off the Wi-Fi on my phone and it still does all these things. It doesn’t seem like my phone is what’s causing the problem. 

Thanks

Grace

 

I don’t understand why you have the D-Link 4 port switch put before the router? Not that it would cause you an issue perhaps, but I would have expected to see that after the router was connected direct to the modem.. Anyhow your setup sounds okay otherwise, with the Sonos Boost connected to one of your router ports.  Just ensure the Boost is set at least one meter away from your router and modem.

Check your routers 2.4Ghz WiFi channel and set it to fixed non-overlapping channel 1, 6 or 11 and if the router allows, set the channel-width to 20Mhz only

Next set your SonosNet channel in the Sonos App, so it is at least 5 channels away from the chosen router channel… also as you are not using any Sonos portable devices, if present, you should remove your WiFi credentials from your Sonos products - see this link:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3488

The older Play:1 is fine and will ‘happily’ run on an S2 system as it is compatible with both S1 and S2. 

So see if that improves things for you.

 

Thanks Ken I will investigate all of this. 
I totally forgot I have a Move on the system as well. 
some of this is a little out of my knowledge range, but not nearly so far that I can’t learn about it as I should.

my router Wi-Fi boost everything is all next to each other. 

 

what’s a mystery is all this worked just fine. My partner is convinced it was something Xfinity did during an upgrade. But no one else on my block is having these connectivity issues. 
 

I will report back!

Userlevel 2

Same exact issue, going on for last 2-3 months.  KBCS switched to BBC around 4:44 PM daily.

Any recommendations?  Was your issue resolved ?

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Submit a systems diagnostic within 10 minutes of an occurrence, and then contact Sonos support. They may be able to tell you what/where the “change channel” command originated. 

I ended up unplugging the system and turning the power strip off and on. Amazingly so that seem to fix it. Go figure. 🤦🏻‍♀️