Intrinsically linked with a generation of music lovers who grew up watching the early days of MTV, Nina Blackwood has been a pioneer for rock listeners in a variety of visual and audio formats for decades. Her journey includes a few instruments, lots of radio, and even a moment when longtime TV producer Robert Morton arguably saved her life.
Her love of music began with playing the piano at age three and beginning theater at age eight. She’s classically trained as a musician, a love that was sparked from seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and knowing immediately that was the direction she wanted to go in.
Piano turned to harp, and harp turned to radio, and radio led to a number of other projects, including getting in front of the camera at the conception of MTV as one of their five original VJs alongside Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and J.J. Jackson.
Even in her harp years, Blackwood says, “I gravitated more to a rock and roll technique when I played, taking on more of what a guitar would do but on harp.”
Growing up in Cleveland had given Blackwood an additional kinship with the music she naturally loved. “There’s a reason that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, rightly so. Cleveland was a huge market for rock and roll. Everybody came through there to play,” she says. “I was really really influenced by growing up in Cleveland.”
Later, she was auditioning in LA while playing harp seven nights a week at various venues and contributing to syndicated radio shows when she came across an article looking for hosts and hostesses who knew music and the music industry for a new music TV channel.
After auditioning on Hollywood Boulevard and not hearing back for a while, she called the number associated with the company only to be connected to a New York Sheraton Hotel.
“What kind of fly-by-night organization is this?” she remembers thinking.
It was MTV before MTV was MTV, and she was unknowingly at the helm. She recalls of her second audition, “Robert Morton, who was one of the executive producers, pretended to be a very obnoxious Billy Joel… They were doing it to see how I could handle interviews. I didn’t back down. I just went with it.”
Finally, at a lunch in New York with a few producers of the show, she ended up choking on a piece of bread when Morton gave her the Heimlich before saying with perfect comedic timing, “You owe me.” She ended up taking the job.
She agreed to move to LA a short while later, as long as she wouldn’t have to miss her beloved tradition of seeing the July 4th fireworks on Topanga Beach with her manager, Danny Sheridan. She flew to New York on July 5th that year, and remained an MTV VJ for five years before being offered jobs at Solid Gold and Entertainment Tonight alongside a syndicated radio show which brought her back to LA.
Now, Blackwood can be heard across a variety of syndicated radio shows. She’s been with SiriusXM for over 20 years doing ‘80s on 8 and has three syndicated shows with United Stations Radio Networks, “Absolutely ‘80s,”” Absolutely ‘80s Spotlight,” and “New Wave Nation.”
For Blackwood, radio has always been a part of the fabric. “I was thinking of radio before television,” she admits, even adding that she’s glad her on-camera days are behind her. “The on-camera thing…with the makeup, the clothes, and all that. You’ve gotta have everything just perfect. I did that for decades… I don’t want to be doing that anymore.”
She continues, “I’m glad I did it, but I’m really glad I don’t do on-camera. It’s too much concentration on how you look. I don’t want to be constantly worried about that… There is such a pressure for women to look good.”
A lack of camera pressure aside, her love of radio stems from a love of community and accessibility. “SiriusXM is great in the fact that it has a channel for everybody… There’s everything available. There are hundreds of channels, and you can find something for your tastes… I really love that.”
“As far as terrestrial radio, I get frustrated in the fact that I know what it was capable of. That’s not being utilized, and there are only so many companies that own all these stations, so it limits what can be done on terrestrial radio. With that, there are not as many jobs available for disc jockeys because you can have somebody doing a morning show that is all over the country.”
For a time, Blackwood hosted “Cruisin’ with Nina” during the afternoon drive time in Denver, which she absolutely loved for how intimate it felt. “I felt so local… I’d get people calling up and requesting something. Somebody would call up about the weather. It was just great. I like that aspect of local radio, really being part of the community, and that station was very much a part of the community.”
Despite her many audience-facing jobs over her illustrious career, Blackwood still finds much-needed time to spend with herself. “It’s a dichotomy for me. People don’t believe that I’m so introverted. They say, ‘Well, how can you be introverted and do what you do?’ It’s different. It’s a different thing.”
All in all, Blackwood’s position as an esteemed music lover, music listener, and music broadcaster stems from her classical training as a musician. It contributes to her great ear, noting that she can hear certain production elements and nuances in songs because of “a type of knowledge of structure and technique” that was instilled in her from a young age.
“Probably my favorite guitar player, Eddie Van Halen, you hear those elements of his classical training in what he did. He was brilliant,” she says, adding that she learned a lot from being in recording studios watching her manager and fellow musician, Sheridan.
Recently, Blackwood has been dusting off her musician chops again, having welcomed a new piano into her life a year ago. “It’s a Yamaha. It’s upright. It’s just amazing, but it’s frustrating because I go to play something that I could play better when I was 12,” she jokes. “And I had to get back to thinking of piano as opposed to thinking of harp.”
When it comes to discovering new music, however, Blackwood still turns to her longtime favorites and a soft spot for rock.
“I do not care for the production sound of a lot of today’s pop music. I think it’s cluttered. I think it’s artificial. I like a more organic sound and more of a rock sound… It’s not prevalent like it was, rock and roll.”
Jacquie Cadorette is a music features reporter for Barrett Media with over 10 years of experience crafting and managing digital editorial content in the broadcast media space. Her radio career began at Philadelphia’s 102.9 WMGK where she assisted with crafting copy for promotional materials before moving on to blogging for Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, writing prep copy for iHeart, and ultimately becoming a senior editorial content producer on Audacy’s central team, where her work was syndicated to over 250 station sites nationwide. After bringing the company’s podcast editorial brand to life as the Head of Content, Jacquie dove into freelance editorial work alongside her other endeavors.
A PA native, Jacquie spent 9 years in New York City and then a few years in Portland, OR to continue her writing career and indulge in great coffee on the west coast. She now lives in South Philly and can be found enjoying live music, looking at the world through her Canon camera, or diving into a project she’s never tried before with unfounded confidence. Jacquie can be reached at jacquiecad.media@gmail.com.
