This story has been updated with details of Monday’s broadcast of the resumed show.
Eight months after ending its reign as Alaska’s longest-running live radio program, “Problem Corner” resumed pretty much like it’d never been away Monday afternoon on KINY-AM, with the first caller seeking DVDs for seasons of “The Walking Dead” along with passing on messages to people he knew in Hoonah and Angoon.
Other people during the hour-long call-in show offered opinions about Tuesday’s municipal election, complained about people driving without headlights after the sun goes down, and offered kittens for adoption that the female caller promised were mousers. The latter led to one of the show’s longest exchanges with host Mike Lane.
“How do you know that?” he asked. “How old are they?”
The kittens have a good teacher in their mother, the woman replied, who then called back a few minutes later to note that there’s actually two litters of kittens and the second aren’t quite yet ready to adopt because they’re “squishy.”
But while the topics of the callers were all over the map, one generally consistent theme was also voiced by nearly all of them: thanks to the station for reviving the live show.
“I know that all the communities that are going to be involved are going to be as happy as I am,” said one woman calling solely to welcome the show’s return. “We missed you.”
The Juneau radio station halted the weekday program that had broadcast for about 70 years on Feb. 2 since “based on our feedback and research maybe it’s time that we pause the show,” Cliff Dumas, the station’s chief content officer and part of its ownership group, said at the time. But Dumas, in an interview Sunday, said after further review and feedback in recent months the decision was made to revive the show.
“Once we discovered the passion people had for the show, and recognizing that the plan for a 70-year-old show in this marketplace is pretty substantial, it was pretty clear that we needed to retool and bring it back,” he said. “The intention has always been to bring it back in some form. It was just finding the right combination of web and social and broadcast to kind of bring it up to a modern standard.”
Lane, an on-air presence at KINY for about 25 years, is the new primary host of “Problem Corner,” with a few people — yet to be named — likely co-host with him on a rotating basis during the week, Dumas said.
“We’re probably going to do three to start with and then on Fridays feature a show that will actually be a shoutout to businesses that want to kind of plug what they’ve got going on, to open up the phone lines that allow small businesses in the community to say ‘Here what I do, here’s what I have for sale, here’s why you might want to come by and shop here,’” he said.
The station is also considering a “spinoff” buy-and-sell call-in show on Saturdays, but Dumas said such calls will continue to be accepted during the open-format weekday shows that historically have been a mixed discussion of issues, events, announcements, messages and sales.
The first scheduled guests on the revived show Monday were Brandi Billings and Jessica Geary, co-chairs of Juneau Safe Graduation, which hosts a “safe, alcohol and drug-free venue” for all local high school graduates. Although it’s only a month and a half into the new school year, the co-chairs said meetings and planning for next spring’s event is already underway and help from volunteers is being sought.
The show’s new time slot is 1 p.m. — two hours later than the program’s former stating time — which is when Lane begins his regular 1-6 p.m. on-air shift.
That later starting time resulted in one of the more intriguing buyer/seller calls, as a man who said he’s a longtime listener of the show — but never home at 1 p.m. — was seeking a battery-operated transistor radio. He also wished a happy birthday to somebody while he was on the air.
“Problem Corner” launched during the mid-1950s and featured some notorious local hosts, including former Juneau Mayor Dennis Egan (who eventually became the station’s owner) from 1980 until 2010. The most recent permanent host was Wade Bryson, a business owner who in recent years has also been a Juneau Assembly member, who started filling in for Egan in 2008 and took over full-time until the final weekday broadcast at the beginning of February of this year.
An effort to keep a version of “Problem Corner” going as a weekly podcast was launched Feb. 14, with Bryson reading messages sent during the week and calling people to discuss issues. The first podcast, for instance, featured a call to Bartlett Regional Hospital Board Chair Kenny Solomon-Gross to discuss a leadership transition at the hospital. Bryson’s final podcast for the station was Aug. 3, where the topics he discussed included Suicide Basin, which would break and cause record flooding a day later.
Bryson, in an interview last week, said he wasn’t interested in hosting the revived “Problem Corner” again due to work and health considerations.
Lane has hosted the program over the years, and been at KINY long enough to be familiar with the people and character of the program that is a major landmark in Southeast Alaska’s radio history, Dumas said.
“It was really one of those things where I was amazed at how many people wanted to jump at the opportunity to host ‘Problem Corner,’” he said. “And when you say that word ‘Problem Corner’ to virtually everybody in this community — and even suggest ‘Would you consider being either a host or co-host? We’re trying to look for that perfect person to do it’ — everybody was like ‘Oh my God, that’s an iconic show. I would love to do it.’ That response alone was inspiration to go ‘OK, this is something really special and we have to honor that.’”
“Egan, of course, put it on the map,” Dumas added. “And the interesting thing is Mike remembers all of that. He was part of all of that. He was here for all of that. So he understands the legacy of the show.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
