‘Good things come to an end:’ Tim and Sid bid farewell
The first episode of “Tim and Sid: Uncut,” the podcast that helped land Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro in the Sportsnet roles many fans know them for today, began with a promise, of sorts, from the duo to their listeners.
“This is going to be whatever you want it to be,” Micallef recalled telling his audience on the premier episode, which launched Sept. 14,
2009. “It’s just going to be two guys talking sports and we’re going to interact with you.”
Micallef and Seixeiro had been talking sports for a handful of years by then. The partnership began on “Score Tonight,” a nightly show on The Score, in 2004.
The podcast was born after that show was pulled off the air in 2009 for budgetary reasons.
It was a Micallef idea, one of many over the years, to extend their working relationship further, one that Seixeiro was happy to run with.
The goal then was one Micallef and Seixeiro have been fine tuning for nearly two decades: to create a sports show that engaged on a different level with devoted listeners and viewers, who would come to be known as Tim-and-Sid-izens.
Micallef and Seixeiro, with the help of Score colleague Cabral Richards, leveraged their respective Twitter accounts to draw people to that first podcast by reading live tweets on air and rose to No. 1 among such sports programs in Canada. “That’s when the community really started to grow,” Seixeiro said.
A dozen years, a network swap and a couple of platform changes later, the community is still there. Thousands of people have joined in on the various iterations of Tim and Sid, from the mid-afternoon radio show on Sportsnet that began in 2011 to the national television show that launched in 2015 and runs weeknights from 5 to 7 p.m.
“It’s a very unique experience that, quite frankly, you don’t see anywhere else in Canada, if I may be so bold,” said Seixeiro, whose fans would expect nothing less of him. “I just think it gives people a different experience. They feel like they know us. They feel like they’ve been a part of it, they feel like they have stock in it. There’s ownership there.”
It was that community Micallef was thinking of in late January, when Seixeiro announced he was leaving their namesake show to become co-host of “Breakfast Television” on Citytv, starting March 10. Micallef knew the move was coming, but their fans did not.
“That really touched me because it was one of the very reasons why we do it the way we do it, is to give people a reason to
smile and laugh,” said Micallef, whose emotions were apparent on air.
On the screen to Micallef’s left, Seixeiro was similarly choked up. He expected the news would leak before he had to announce it himself. When it didn’t, sharing was tougher than he anticipated.
“You didn’t realize what the show meant for certain people, and especially as they were going through some difficult moments in their lives, whatever they were,” he said.
And then there was Micallef. “I don’t have a career without Tim,” Seixeiro said. “I don’t. We had our show cancelled, I didn’t know what I was going do and to extend Tim and Sid further was his idea, it wasn’t mine.”
The success of the Tim and Sid brand, the community they have built, is rooted in their relationship. They will tell you they have their differences, but that’s not the whole story.
“I actually always thought, working with them and being friends with them, they actually shared more similarities than most,” said Adnan Virk, a colleague from their Score days. “First thing is, they’re both really
passionate sports fans. It wasn’t like one was a casual fan and one was the real brains of the operation.”
And they are able to deliver humour and highlights in equal doses, Virk said. “One of their great qualities, and both guys have this, is the ability to be self deprecating and not take themselves too seriously.”
That willingness to poke fun at their guests, at each other and at themselves made Micallef and Seixeiro the kind of guys viewers and listeners would like to have a beer with and become friends with, veteran sports broadcaster Dan Shulman said.
“You can’t fake a personality three hours a day, five days a week, for however many years it was,” Shulman said.
But great personalities aren’t everything. Shulman enjoyed doing baseball segments on the Sportsnet show because of how seriously the hosts took their craft.
“I never once turned it on and said, ‘Oh, Tim’s grumpy or Sid’s sleepy.’ Never,” Shulman said. “The fact that they delivered the goods every single day and that they kept it fresh and fun for almost 20 years is mindboggling to me.”
That run comes to an official end Friday, when Micallef and Seixeiro host their final show together.
Over the past year, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and they were forced to produce the show from home, there were days when sports was the last thing on Seixeiro’s mind. He believes joining “Breakfast Television” is a “beautiful challenge” to show there are more layers to him beyond sports talk. “I feel like I’ve been proving a lot of people wrong for a long time and I don’t really want to stop now,” he said. “I like that feeling.” Micallef, a self-proclaimed “sports guy,” will continue in the pair’s current time spot on the “Tim and Friends” show, incorporating a notebook full of ideas and Sportsnet’s deep cast of talent. He firmly believes they can create a collective that can hit at a level one show could never reach. “I do feel like there’s a lot of pressure but I also feel like the audience that I asked at the start of the podcast to tell us where to go, and led us to remarkable success … won’t lead me astray,” Micallef said. “I think they’ll lead me to what they want, and listening to what people want these days I think is probably the way to go.”
What people will want on Friday is a chance to say goodbye to the duo.
“To be synonymous with Tim so closely is one of the great honours of my life because I know what kind of professional he is and what kind of person,” said Seixeiro, who is in the dark about any finale plans. He would be honoured if people could support both he and Micallef individually in the future as intensely they have supported them together in the past. It’s a bittersweet parting, Micallef said. “I understand it,” he said. “I know most good things come to an end and I’m really excited about what the next part will be. I literally am right now looking at it like (Jerry) Seinfeld and Larry David were able to split up and still be remarkably successful without each other and I think, on a way different level, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Seinfeld and Larry David, huh? Well, maybe not a direct comparison, Micallef said. But Seixeiro, as ever, is on board. “In typical Micallef fashion, the bar’s set pretty high there,” Seixeiro said. “And that’s who Timmy is, so I’ll go down the road with him on that. Why not? Let’s give it a go.”