Yep.
I use tunein to select stations, WHYY for East Coast time, WBEZ for central time, KUAZ for mountain time, and the fabled KQED for Pacific time. I’ve never tried to just “ play npr”, except on my alexa after I’ve set it to the local station.
So are you saying that the default nor doesn’t work for your default or that a particular station is offline? Both of those have different reasons.