I just finished converting to a JSON feed, and it looks like the category sorting is working for me. Are you using playlists in your JSON,
mitchstein? Instead of selecting "Chronological Order" for my categories in Direct Publisher, I selected "Use Playlist Order", and made sure the video IDs in my JSON playlists are sorted in the order I want them.
I'm going to try switching one of my categories to "Chronological Order" and see what happens. I'm guessing you're right, and chronological sorting is broken for JSON too. They were just telling me to use playlists as the workaround.
Here's my current JSON:
https://thewellcommunity.org/podcasts/sermons/json/roku