On February 13 2012, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping began an historic visit to Washington DC.   The man widely expected to be China’s next President arrived for a four-day, cross-country tour of the United States that included stops at the White House, the Pentagon, in small-town Iowa and big-city Los Angeles.

Both the US and China pledged that the visit would help improve bilateral ties between Washington DC and Beijing.  But at a time of tension between the two capitals, there were no shortage of divisive issues on the agenda.

Simon previewed Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States for Channel News Asia, the region’s leading all-news channel:

And when Xi Jinping met President Obama at The White House, and then – rarely for Chinese leaders – publicly discussed the country’s human rights situation, Simon filed this report for Channel News Asia:

On January 30 2012, President Barack Obama made a little history at the White House. He took part in the first-ever, completely “virtual” interview – a Google+/YouTube project that Simon produced along with the team at Feature Story News.

The President was questioned directly by members of the public about a range of issues, including the Economy, Foreign Affairs and Innovation. He also answered pre-taped questions submitted by members of the YouTube audience.

Production of the event presented enormously complex challenges. FSN’s team in Washington DC had to create an environment in which the US President could comfortably feel like he was part of a Google+Hangout, while at the same time looking straight into a broadcast-quality camera in the Roosevelt Room of The White House.

Simon produced the event from “Studio G” in Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. You can watch the program here:

And then, on October 8th 1973, the world changed.  LBC (the London Broadcasting Company) was born, offering Londoners not only Britain’s first licensed commercial radio station….but also its first-ever commercial radio news operation.  One week later, legal commercial pop music radio entered the scene in the form of London’s Capital Radio.

In its first year, LBC struggled through industrial disputes, technical problems, and a general failure to inspire the London audience.  But by the middle of the 1970s, the situation started to stabilize, and LBC found its niche.

Bob Holness  – who died on January 6, 2012, aged 83 – was in large measure responsible for exploiting that niche to the full.  He started out as the station’s traffic reporter – the first radio reporter in the UK ever to hover above London’s traffic jams – American-style -  in a helicopter, reporting on the inevitable daily catastrophe on the North Circular.
LBC Bob Holness Helicopter 417 by Paul Easton

His LBC bosses rapidly realized that he had natural on-air chemistry with morning show host Douglas Cameron, and Cameron’s original sidekick (Clive Roslin, father of the well-known Gaby) was redeployed to make room for Bob Holness on the anchor desk.

The AM program run from 6am till 10am on LBC’s AM and FM (or, as it was known then, VHF) frequencies.  Bob and Doug quickly established the program as the essential wake-up habit for – at its peak – more than 2 million Londoners each day.  Imagine that….more than two million people each morning tuning in to a show that was a smart, articulate, engaging alternative to the (excellent) “Today” program on BBC Radio 4.

You can catch just a flavor of it in this television advertisement for the show, screened in around 1979:

Its agenda was – by today’s standards – stunningly up-market, and LBC had a team of correspondents worldwide contributing to the program, plus full access (via Independent Radio News) to content from a growing array of commercial radio newsrooms across the nation.

Whether the major story of the day was in Romford or Rhodesia, AM brought you the news in a crisp, engaging, skillful manner from its windowless and nicotine-stained newsroom in a Gough Square basement (“Communications House”) just off Fleet Street.   It was on-the-scene reporting of the kind you rarely hear on UK commercial radio today.  And many of the reporters went on to become some of the best in the business:  Peter Allen of 5 Live, Malcolm Brabant of the BBC, Jon Snow and the late Carol Barnes and Joan Thirkettle of ITN among many, many others.
Bob Holness on the LBC Breakfast Show by LBC973

To be sure, there was “lifestyle” reporting on “AM”.  Every year the show broadcast live from the “Ideal Home Exhibition”, with Bob eagerly experiencing the latest mod-cons that every home was encouraged to acquire.  But on “AM”, the hard news always came first, and Bob handled dozens of live interviews each morning, many of them as news was breaking all around him.

My first paid job in radio saw me working in a corner of the Gough Square newsroom as a freelance “wire ripper”.  Armed with a machete – literally – it was my job to keep tabs on about 15 teletype machines, and rip the agency copy they brought to LBC from the newsrooms of Reuters, the Press Association, AP, UPI and a variety of other sources.  I worked overnights, and in mid-shift – at around 4am – Bob would walk through the door to prepare for another edition of “AM”.

It’s hard always to be cheerful.  And even harder always to be cheerful at 4am.  But Bob managed it, day-in and day-out.  He loved his work, and the program’s stunning success was driven by the fact that he and Douglas (with whom I worked when I was Washington Correspondent for LBC in its later years) were not only an astoundingly-talented professional couple, but also the best of friends.
LBC’s Tribute to Bob Holness by LBC973

In a business that is all-too-often dominated by large egos and prima donnas, Bob and Doug set the standards for the production of accessible, engaging and entrepreneurial journalism that appealed to Londoners regardless of their politics or their socio-economic background.  “AM” – now sorely missed, despite the very excellent work of Nick Ferrari on today’s “LBC” – personified the sound of “LBC News Radio”, a station that changed the sound of radio in the UK.

When he retired from LBC (with minimal fuss from which others could learn….”no more shall I say” were his final words to listeners) he went on to enjoy huge success as the host of the “Blockbusters” game show.  And as the host of “Anything Goes” on the BBC World Service, his radio skills reached an enormous audience worldwide.

But for those of us who grew up listening to LBC, and were inspired by its buccaneering, yet serious-minded approach to news-gathering, the death of Bob Holness leaves a huge gap.  And a reminder that at its best, commercial speech radio should be every-bit as informative, serious and up-market as its non-commercial competitors.   If we can all emulate a bit of “Bob and Doug”, we’d be serving our audiences very well.

Finally, here’s a lengthy interview with Bob, conducted by former LBC presenter Steve Jones and broadcast on London Talkback Radio, the successor service on AM to the original LBC, and sourced from Geoff Lumley’s splendid LBC website:

In the hours following Kim Jong Il’s death, the Obama administration said it was “deeply concerned” about the welfare of the North Korean people, and engaged in fevered behind-the-scenes consultation with regional partners in a bid to ascertain more information about the political transition underway in North Korea.

Simon’s multi-media coverage from Washington, included a this report aired on several stations worldwide including Radio New Zealand:

And this television report, seen by viewers of pan-Asian broadcaster Channel News Asia:

During the course of the war, nearly 4,500 US troops lost their lives.  By some counts, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians were also killed.  And US leaders watched an initially popular military operation become a political millstone.

Simon covered the start of the war in 2003, and its finish in 2011.  Here’s his appearance on Radio New Zealand’s “Morning Report”, discussing the departure of the last US forces from the country.

The former Czech President, playwright and poet Vaclav Havel died on December 18, 2011 at the age of 75.  He’d been in ill-health for several years.

A prominent dissident who at one point spent 5 years in jail for his beliefs, he led the 1989 Velvet Revolution that saw Soviet dominance of Czechoslovakia come to end, and went on to choreograph the peaceful split of the nation into two separate countries.

Havel went on to lead the independent Czech Republic, and never gave up fighting totalitarianism, as exemplified by this extraordinary video, made secretly by Havel in the 1980s and unmasking the intelligence agents who had literally built a surveillance office in Havel’s own back yard.

Simon covered the 1989 “Velvet Revolution”, working at the time for Christian Science Monitor TV, and interviewing Havel shortly after his election as President.  Following Havel’s death, he looked back on those heady days in the Czech capital, Prague:

Prague, 1990

Here Simon reflects on Havel’s incomparable moral authority:

Vaclav Havel: Worth The Wait

When Simon and his production team showed up at the Castle in Prague for a scheduled interview with President Havel (pictured, left), they found themselves kept waiting for 90 minutes.  Here, Simon explains why:

On December 16, 2011 the journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens died at the age of 62.  A self-styled “contrarian”, he was best known for a series of books questioning public figures including Bill Clinton, Mother Theresa, and the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Generally considered a liberal, he dismayed many of his readers by supporting President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.   Christopher Hitchens devoted the final years of his life to campaigning against organized religion.  Simon compiled this report for radio stations worldwide.

On December 14th 2011, US President Barack Obama welcomed some of the last US forces serving in Iraq home to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  The ceremony marked the formal end of the country’s nearly 9 year military operation in Iraq, which began with the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, but quickly morphed into almost a decade of controversial and violent occupation.

Simon covered the start of the war in 2003 for a wide variety of networks around the world.  And, when President Barack Obama declared the war’s end, he filed this report for Channel News Asia.

On November 29, 2011 at judge in Los Angeles sentence Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s physician, to the maximum sentence permitted by law – four years in prison – following his conviction of the involuntary manslaughter of the pop superstar.  The widely-watched case made headlines around the world, and was covered for several leading broadcasters by Feature Story News.

Here’s Simon’s report on the sentencing, as it aired on Radio New Zealand’s afternoon news program, Checkpoint.

On November 28th 2011, the Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani vowed that there would be no return to “business as usual” in his country’s relationship with the United States, following an unexplained NATO air strike that took the lives of more than 25 Pakistani soldiers the previous weekend.  As protestors took to the streets of Pakistan, US policymakers scrambled to respond to yet another deep downturn in US/Pakistan relations.

Simon’s coverage of the story aired worldwide, first on a variety of radio networks that subscribe to the FSN World News Feed:

And Simon’s television coverage of the story aired throughout Asia on the region’s leading 24-hour news channel, Channel News Asia: