Tim Blackwell launches solo podcast, Introducing

Tim Blackwell’s “radio brain” makes launching an interview podcast a challenge, largely because it’s hard to switch off the constant chit chat in his head about keeping things tight.

“I’ve had to relearn how to actually interview that’s not a three-minute ‘Guy Sebastian, tell us about your new album and where we can buy your tickets. Quickly, let’s play a game,'” Blackwell tells Radio Today.

“I’m still kind of radio trained, where an alarm goes off in my head at four minutes – ‘It’s too long. It’s too long.'”

This background noise in his head means he has to really listen to his guests – musicians both prominent and emerging – and follow the conversation, rather than control it.

‘Introducing with Tim Blackwell’ launches today 

“When you have someone in live, at 5:20pm on national Drive, you’ve kind of got six minutes and you have an exact part of your brain that you know exactly where this is going to go and how it’s going to finish, so you can get off and hit the ads.

“So just sitting in a room with somebody and letting them almost dictate the pace has been quite a nice learning curve for me,” he says.

The other nice change, he says, is he can now say ‘Yes’ to his musician friends more often.

Due to his prominent role on Nova’s national Drive show – most recently as part of Kate, Tim & Marty, and now Kate, Tim & Joel – his close contacts and confidants in the music industry often wanted to use his platform.

“Our radio show, we don’t really have any guests,” he explains of the dilemma. “We have a segment called ‘Quick Draw’ every week, which is a little game that Kate [Ritchie] plays, and we have a guest in for that, and occasionally when something pops up that’s worthwhile, we might drag a guest for some reason,” he says, noting how often he’s had to say ‘no’ to musicians in need recently.

“I’ve been getting very good over the last few years at saying ‘no’ to people. So I thought I might start saying ‘yes’ to people. I’m hanging out with these people anyway… Before COVID I was seeing one or two live shows a week… So I kind of thought ‘Well, I’m hanging out with these people anyway, why not actually get something out of it professionally and hit record, and then hopefully help them out along the way?”

So, who is the podcast for then? The musicians he can now say yes to? Fans of Blackwell who want to hear a more authentic, less “snappy”, less “always-on” radio version of him?

“Well I’ve made a podcast that I would like to listen to, so if you wanted me to go really specific, white 39-year-old men,” he jokes.

Fans of music of all types can get something from it, he says more seriously.

“I want it still to be concise, and not waffly, but just a nice music podcast that you kind of find out a little bit more [about] someone that you might have liked for a while, or alternatively, one person that you’ve never heard of before, and kind of get a little insight that way,” he says, “but also still in a nicely produced way”, he adds, unable to switch off that radio brain.

“I just thought this is a great way that people can get a real snapshot into an artist that they don’t know or that they love, and walk away feeling like they’ve learned something at the same time.”

Listeners of his radio show will also be able to hear a different side of him, he says – “You’ll see from the first 50 seconds that I’m hugely passionate about music”.

And while he may occupy the #1 position in national Drive, Blackwell is realistic about his chances of podcast domination.

“It’s not designed to be in the top 10 podcasts in the country, I don’t think,” he says. “No one’s getting murdered. It’s not true crime on the Northern Beaches. And also, the artists aren’t super famous, some of them. Some of them, as I said, you’ve never heard of before… So, not every episode’s going to be for everyone.

“But I kind of feel so chuffed that it’s happened, already, without anyone having listened to it yet, because I’ve had the experience. So it’s just something just to add to my work life really, that I’m really looking forward to.”

Introducing with Tim Blackwell, presented by Nova Podcasts and produced in partnership with Pro Podcast Production, launches today. The first episode features Yungblud.