GROUP K BROADCASTING - Key Persons
Allan King is well known as a presenter of award-winning television news, having been a main Sky News presenter for more than 14 years. He is now one of the country's top media trainers with clients including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and a host of commercial companies including multinationals. His courses cover radio, television and press interview techniques and effective use of social media. As well as the UK, he has run courses in India, Sri Lanka, Portugal, Russia and Tunisia.
A significant part of Allan's career has been spent in business and management. At 22 years of age he was running a radio station, and trained many of the presenters who founded the Independent Local Radio network in the late 1970s.
At Sky News Allan anchored many major breaking stories, including the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport, winning a BAFTA in 2008. He was on-air when the Queen Mother's death was announced, and received praise in several newspapers for his sensitive handling of this sad event.
In the 1970s and 80s he was a familiar voice on national commercial radio as a main newsreader with IRN (Independent Radio News), and in London presented a wide range of programmes on LBC Radio.
In 2008 Allan was engaged by the Government of Gibraltar to conduct a complete review of the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), the territory's equivalent of the BBC. The review was aimed at remodelling the organisation to bring it into line with modern broadcasting practises. Subsequently he was offered and accepted a three-year engagement as Chief Executive Officer.
The role involved overseeing the move from analogue to digital radio and television broadcasting, and establishing online operations including extensive social media platforms and apps for iOS and Android. Negotiating with suppliers such as Arqiva, and the union UNITE, was a key part of Allan's responsibilities. When he returned to the UK in 2013 he left GBC as a state of the art digital broadcast and online business.
He has also been involved in the record industry, releasing Bollywood music before the name Bollywood was invented and, in 1986, charting on his label a song called Somebody To Call My Girl sung by world champion boxer Barry McGuigan (if that sounds unlikely, remember that Barry was a singer before he was a boxer, and comes from a family of superb Irish musicians!)
These days Allan also acts as a broadcast consultant for consumer affairs and business programmes.
His hobbies include anything electronic - as he says, ‘if you can put batteries in it or plug it into the mains, I like it!' This love of technology extends to the ancient as well as the modern, as he is an avid collector and restorer of 1920s - 60s radios, gramophones and telephones, and is a licensed radio ‘Ham'.
Allan obtained a Private Pilot's Licence in 1980.
Frank Partridge has combined broadcasting with written journalism in his two-pronged media career. Initially specialising in broadcasting, he was a national radio presenter with BBC Radio 1 (Newsbeat), Radio 4 (PM) and World Service (Outlook) before becoming a special correspondent, reporting from more than 40 countries and anchoring BBC radio's coverage of Nelson Mandela's release from prison in South Africa that signalled the end of apartheid. At PM, he won a Sony Radio Award for his coverage of Margaret Thatcher's resignation.
In 1993 Frank became one of the principal anchors on Sky News before returning to the radio studio in 2002 as the drive-time presenter at the re-launched LBC in London. At Sky, Frank anchored two programmes (the Oklahoma bombing and the UN invasion of Kosovo) that won gold awards from the Radio & Television Society.
More recently, Frank has appeared frequently in the UK press, writing for the Independent, the Guardian and the Sunday Times as well as a host of magazines, and he is a visiting lecturer on journalism at the University of London.
Jamie MacNeil has served as Technical Director on a variety of media training courses, for Muslim communities and charities, for the Cabinet Office and Royal Courts of Justice, as well as for large firms. With Group K he has been Head of Production of simulated news broadcasts for crisis management exercises at British Embassies in Lisbon, Colombo and Moscow. His extensive freelance experience includes content direction for event branding, producing promotional material for the Jaguar F-Type, Jack Daniels, Volvic and the Westfield Shopping Centre.
Jamie holds a BA (Hons) in film and media (with English literature), including internships at Sky News and BBC radio, and a three-year Diploma in Professional Acting from the Oxford School of Drama, recognised by the BBC as one of the UK's five best drama schools.
Samantha Simmonds has been a broadcast journalist for over 15 years. She is a main presenter for Sky News - where she has been working for 7 years. She regularly anchors the evening paper reviews, and the main morning and afternoon programmes. Samantha has broken some of the biggest stories of the past few years including the Aurora cinema shootings in Colorado, news of Michael Jackson's death, the death of Amy Winehouse and the sentencing and subsequent hanging of Saddam Hussein. Among Samantha's most recent highlights were presenting at the Olympic Park on the night of the Olympic opening ceremony and on location outside Buckingham Palace during the Royal wedding - covering ‘the kiss' and interviewing the crowds. She regularly interviews senior politicians, celebrities and ordinary people touched by extraordinary events.
Samantha started reporting for BBC local radio in Yorkshire in 1995 before joining Channel 5 as a producer in 1996. She started reporting for BBC News in 2000 - working for BBC Breakfast and BBC London news. With the BBC, Samantha covered many big stories such as the Soham murders, the Potters Bar train crash, the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from New York, and she reported on the 7/7 bombings in London.