Bobby Brown

Bobby Brown has been a media professional all his working life, having worked on all traditional and emerging platforms over the years, at one stage, in all of them simultaneously. His career started with the Sunday Times, where he basically brow beat the editor into giving him a job. “I just hanged around near deadline time, until they became so annoyed with me that they roped me in and realised that I could actually string a few sensible sentences together.

Bobby started writing at school and with the encouragement of a teacher, entered and won a poem-writing competition. “Radio was always waiting in the wings tough. Subconsciously I was so enamoured with the medium, that as a curious kid, I actually took broken radios apart and tried putting them back together again,” he remembers fondly. But it all happened accidentally, while I was a rookie reporter for the Star in JHB, the legendary Will Bernard called to offer me the co-presenting slot on his weekend breakfast show on SAfm. Then it was off to the pioneering Talk Radio 702, after being head-hunted by the inimitable Debra Patta, who was the news editor at the time. Shortly afterwards, television came beckoning. Over the years, Bobby has found himself doing short stints on MNet’s glossy magazine show “Front Row,” presenting several inserts on eTV, presenting South Africa’s segment in the global millennium broadcast and eventually joining the stellar cast of SABC2’s ground-breaking breakfast show AM2Day. Bobby’s most memorable assignment as a broadcast journalist was travelling from the northern-most tip of Africa, to the southern-most tip in 4X4s, broadcasting live from a different country every other day. “That was one of the most intense and exhilarating experiences I have ever had,” he remembers.

In between, he worked in various capacities at SmileFM, Kfm, several domestic & international media houses and Cape Talk, where his peers voted him as a recipient of an an MTN Radio Award. Bobby currently anchors Magic Breakfast, weekdays from 6am to 10am. In addition to broadcasting and writing a weekly social commentary page for the Daily Voice, where he deconstructs and provides insight into current affairs, Bobby wears several other hats. He anchors two different podcasts – one on lifestyle and technology and the other on fatherhood and the challenges men face in blended family setups. He still loves to DJ at parties; is a science and technology writer (check out his daily ”iBeat Report” on Magic); a media, marketing & PR strategy trainer and a professional speaker and corporate MC.

There’s one last medium that Bobby hasn’t cracked yet – being an author. “I have been busy with at least three different books for the last few years, and I always get side-tracked. But I feel that this is the year, even though it’s almost done. I am going to help Magic828 soar to the heights in deserves, and get at least one of those books done,” he says confidently.