 Born and raised primarily in southern California, I gained most of my practical experience in radio and television broadcasting from my father, James Wesley Simon, a former Vice President of CBS Radio News, an ABC Radio executive in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas, Vice President of Mutual Broadcasting System and finally the owner of his own radio station in suburban Los Angeles, while I was in High School.
As a teenager, I would divide my free time between doing homework from school and my own disc jockey show on my father’s radio station in Thousand Oaks, California.
My first news was afternoon news anchor at WPOP news radio in Hartford, Connecticut, a CBS affiliate at that time a station owned by the Hollywood entertainer Merv Griffin. While vacationing with my family in Los Angeles in February of 1986, on a lark, I dropped a tape and resume at KFWB, an all news station owned at that time by Westinghouse Electric’s Broadcasting division -- after a ten minute interview, I was hired and moved to Los Angeles..
I worked at KFWB as strictly a reporter, not an anchor or presenter. But I covered some interesting stories such as celebrity deaths, organized gang crime and the August 1986 crash of an Aero Mexico airliner into a neighborhood in Cerritos, a suburb of LA. For my reporting I won a Golden Microphone and LA Press Club award. This caught the attention of cross-town rival and CBS owned and operated KNX news radio. I was hired and began work at KNX in July of 1987. Work at KNX was initially very satisfying wherein I was able to work Monday, Tuesday and Friday as the prime morning drive reporter and on Saturday and Sunday was able to anchor the morning news. During my tenure at KNX I was privileged to cover such notable stories as the San Francisco earthquake/Loma Priada, a PSA airplane crash in Paso Robles, California, the Pope’s visit to Los Angeles and many, many more. After KNX, I was hired as the ABC Radio news resident correspondent in Sarajevo where I covered the Bosnian war from 1993 through 1998. Concurrent to my ABC radio job I took over as bureau chief for United Press International in 1994. Writing daily reports and summary reports on the war that were satellite unlinked to UPI in London and Washington. This job I held until UPI closed the bureau in March of 1997.
In June 1997 I accepted a contract from both the United States Agency for International Development and the European Union as an English Teacher for the new Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina and because of my media experience, the Public Relations Director of the Bank, helping to promote the new currency of Bosnia in all three ethnic regions of the country. This job I held until September 2000 when I became a media consultant for Volksbank in Vienna, Austria. Upon conclusion of this contract I was hired by the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Andrei Klyuyev as a personal image and media consultant. This I did while conducting press writing seminars for the USAID in Kyiv, Minsk and Kishinev, Moldova. Leaving the Ukraine in 2006 I began work for Citadel/ABC radio and found myself back in Moscow, Russia working as resident radio correspondent for ABC Radio, returning to my wife’s hometown of Minneapolis in April 2008, where I worked as afternoon drive anchor at KTLK-FM. My eldest brother Jim, whose professional name is Jim Avila, is Chief Legal Correspondent for ABC TV’s 20/20 in New York, and my younger brother Jaie is a TV reporter at the ABC affiliate in San Antonio.
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