He has worked in radio since 1969 but is probably best known for his 28-year stint as announcer and character voice-over for the Nine Network's Hey Hey It's Saturday, Australia's longest-running variety show. One of his best-known characters was a stick puppet known as "Dickie Knee". [1]
In 1969, he joined 2GN Goulburn as an announcer, newsreader, copywriter, salesman, and record librarian. [1]
In 1970, he joined 2CA Canberra, where he worked in a variety of on-air shifts for 18 months until mid-1971, when he joined 3AW in Melbourne. As evening announcer, Blackman worked with the Reverend Alex Kenworthy for a number of years on "Nightline".
In 1974, he joined 3AK where he hosted the morning show until 1975, when he moved to Sydney to join 2UE as a "floating" announcer for just three months. At TCN-9 in Sydney, he was a staff continuity announcer and daytime newsreader for National Nine News alongside his work on Hey Hey It's Saturday, which he would do "down the line" to GTV-9 in Melbourne every Saturday from an announcing booth at TCN-9.
He returned to 3AK Melbourne in 1979 to host the breakfast show until 1981. Later that year, he joined 3AW to host their breakfast show with Paul Barber. After Barber parted company with 3AW not long afterwards, Blackman was joined by former ATV-0 newsreader and staff announcer, Bruce Mansfield. This collaboration became one of the most successful combinations in Australian radio history, with 3AW breakfast topping the ratings for 5 consecutive years until 1986.
After leaving 3AW in controversial circumstances on 30 April 1986, Blackman became part of the short-lived, ill-fated CBC Network (2UE/3AK) experiment; and, in December of that year, his contract was not renewed.
From 1987 to 1990, he co-hosted a breakfast show on 3UZ (now RSN Racing & Sport) with Coodabeen Champions member Ian Cover and, later, Wilbur Wilde.
In 1997, after a 7-year hiatus from radio, Blackman was employed as the co-host of the 3AK breakfast show with Anna "Pinky" Pinkus and Denis Donoghue (Lawyers, Guns & Money) until 2000.
In 2004, he joined Triple M Adelaide and was co-host of The John Blackman & Jane Reilly Breakfast Show until December 2007.
Other television shows Blackman has appeared on and announced for include Blankety Blanks , Personality Squares, The Paul Hogan Show , The Daryl Somers Tonight Show, Holiday Island , Family Feud and many others. Blackman was interviewed on ABC's Talking Heads in 2006.
Accusations of racism
In 2009, Blackman returned as part of the Hey Hey It's Saturday reunion specials to reprise his voice-over role. Despite respectable ratings, the show's contract was not renewed for 2011. During the second 2009 comeback episode, a Red Faces act called "the Jackson Jive" (a Jackson 5 parody) caused outrage, especially in the UK and USA, after the act dressed up in blackface to perform the Jackson 5 hit "Can You Feel It" in a jive style. The show, and Blackman, had a longstanding history of mocking people of colour, which was demonstrated in a March 2021 video compilation by John Patterson, which has received 165,000 views as of 2023. [2] Blackman also has a four-decade feud with Kamahl, which was instigated in part by Blackman and Daryl Somers' persistent bullying on Hey Hey, including racist jokes. [3] While Somers eventually made a full apology regarding his past actions after initially being criticised for invoking cancel culture to defend his actions, Blackman doubled down upon his past actions: "Goodness me[,] Kamahl, 37 years and you're still 'humiliated'." [4] Blackman's racist jokes and humiliations were numerous, but a particularly egregious example was when he surprised Kamahl with white powder being slammed into his face. Blackman joked at the time that this made him a "real white man". [5]
Return to radio
From April 2015 to May 2016, he was employed at MAGIC 1278 in Melbourne and MAGIC 882 in Brisbane as their Breakfast Announcer between 6.00am and 10.00am, initially as co-host with Jane Holmes, who resigned in April 2015 for personal reasons. Blackman continued in a solo role until May 2016, when he was unceremoniously dumped by Macquarie Media Ltd. [6]
According to the MML COO, Adam Lang, “He's a very respected and highly regarded broadcaster but his style of broadcasting, while excellent, wasn't working on the MAGIC format.”
Significantly, in the third radio survey for 2016, (released a few days later) Blackman actually increased his Melbourne audience from 1.5% to 2.2% and his cumulative audience to 19,000 listeners (2,000 more than the station average).
