Vale: Brian Davies

Pioneering producer and journalist Brian Davies, who produced Australia’s first television breakfast news program, and helped set up Imparja, has died aged 86.

The Age reports his health had been failing in recent months, and he had spent much of January in hospital.

Davies joined the ABC as a news cadet, aged 18, working in the ABC’s newsroom in Kings Cross. He covered general news and politics for ABC Radio, saw the birth of television from the newsroom floor, and was posted to London as a foreign correspondent.

Soon after his return from London, Davies joined Channel Seven as an on-camera news reporter before shifting to Seven Days, the then Fairfax-owned network’s answer to the ABC’s Four Corners, later becoming chief reporter, presenter and executive producer of the show.

He later worked at Patrician Films, producing children’s shows and documentaries, including Lens on Lilliput, and Australia’s first animated cartoons for TV, including Howard the Mild Colonial Boy about a nervous bushranger.

Davies returned to Channel Seven, producing Sydney Today, the country’s first television breakfast news program but the 4am starts were exhausting with a young family.

He rejoined the ABC, working at This Day Tonight before joining Four Corners, where he rose to become executive producer by 1977. During his leadership, the program won a Logie and a UN Peace Prize, among other awards.

At the request of Bruce Gyngell, Davies joined SBS in 1982 and produced various programs including Issues, a weekly panel show hosted by Margaret Throsby. He later helped set up Imparja, the broadcaster for Indigenous Australians and produced Newsworld a revolutionary late evening news bulletin with irascible host Clive Robertson for Seven. He also wrote the 1981 book Those Fabulous TV Years.

Over his career, Davies collaborated with many of the most celebrated journalists and broadcasters including George Negus, Mike Carlton, Caroline Jones, Peter Luck, Paul Lyneham, Andrew Olle, Peter Ross and the Britain’s David Frost.

After retirement, Davies also fought for the rights of refugees and detained migrants, working with the Manly parish social justice group and visiting Villawood every Tuesday for many years.

Photo: The Age