ABC (Australia) radio stations will not play through SVC

Hi ​@Snash 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I am sorry to hear about this issue you are having with playing ABC Radio via a Sonos Voice Control command.

At present, this is expected behaviour - as Sonos Voice Control runs locally on your speaker and without the help of data centres, its ability to understand names of Artists, Albums and Radio Stations (among others) is somewhat limited. At present, only US English and French are supported, so when dealing with the English language, Sonos Voice Control has been programmed to recognise the most requested Artists, Albums and Radio Stations in the US. This does not include ABC (Australia) Radio, of course.

A workaround would be to mark ABC Radio as a Favourite in the Sonos app, and then, after at most 24 hours, Sonos Voice Control should recognise the request for ABC Radio. You can hurry this along by removing SVC from a speaker and then adding it back again, should you wish.

Add favorites to your Home screen

I hope this helps.

I have tried that, and I have also tried Alexa and Google and none have worked.   I bought the speaker specifically in order to get SvC so my wife could call up her radio stations. It has failed at the one function I bought it for and I am in the dog house. It is very disappointing, I should have just bought an Echo.

i didn’t realise that SVC would be so limited, Sonos Radio so limited and that compatibility with Alexa an Google was also not easy.

Hi ​@Snash 

I think it’s possible that there is a conflict with the American station called ABC, which may not play where you are due to geo-restrictions, but is also preventing ABC from working from your Favourites.

I am very surprised to hear that Alexa is unable to play it either, however. I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.