Ed Hall
sailor
A passionate and experienced offshore yacht racer, Ed completed his 7th Rolex Fastnet Race in August 2019. He has raced boats in many different classes, from small sports boats to larger yachts in the UK, Caribbean and Mediterranean. He is an RYA Yachtmaster and Advanced Powerboat skipper.
Ed is part of the Night Owl racing syndicate, and was 12th to the Rock in the 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race, 10th in IRC2 in the 2011 Fastnet, and overall winner of the JOG Offshore Series in 2009.
Ed is also an active RNLI lifeboat crew member on the Thames Lifeboats where he has served since 2002.
Business
Activist
Ed has been leading digital television and retail businesses since 1998. He has managed multiple TV channels in news, film, sports and entertainment. He also built and sold a group of TV shopping channels in 2005, and has sat on the board of a wide range of television and retail companies.
He has led on complex business projects in Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. He created the UK's first financial services televison channel, Simply Money (where Martin Lewis began as the Money Saving Expert), and he is often credited with creating the market in EPG positions on the Sky platform.
In 2011 he created Comux, a new company that beat the BBC to win the £25M contract to build the national broadcasting infrastructure for the new UK-wide local television network, reaching 13 million homes, a public sector project that was delivered on-time and on budget.
In 2017 Ed took on a role as interim CEO restructuring a national terrestrial broadcaster in Greece, returning in the autumn of 2018.
To discuss new opportunities or for advice you can always get in touch with Ed through his office at Expert Media Partners.
Since the 2016 EU Referendum, Ed has been a strong campaigning voice for the outcome of the vote to be respected. He resigned from the Conservative Party in August 2019, and was subsequently selected as the Brexit Party candidate for the constituency of Dover. He is the author of Brexit and the UK Television Industry (2017) and the Brexit Broadcasting Licensing Directory (2018).
Ed has a background in political activism, and in 1994 he was the founder of the Armed Forces Legal Challenge Group, and he led the campaign to lift the ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the British Armed Forces. His book, We Can't Even March Straight (Vintage), was published in 1995. He received several awards for this successful human rights campaign which succeeded in overturning government policy at the European Court of Human Rights in 1999. In the 1990s he worked extensively as a researcher and speech-writer for members of both Houses of Parliament.
Ed wrote and presented a range of programmes for BBC Radio 5 Live in the series Ed Hall Investigates winning a Sony Radio Award for News and Current Affairs in 1998. The BBC News website carries details of his expose of a secret world trade in genetically-modified pigs click here.
Other radio series written and presented by Ed Hall include The First 100 Days (of the Blair Government) for BBC Radio, and Encyclopaedia Historica for the BBC World Service.
In 1991 and 1992 Ed produced programmes for Channel 4 Dispatches and Thames Television on drug smuggling at Heathrow Airport and British mercenaries fighting in the former Yugoslavia.
As a writer, Ed's work has appeared in a very diverse range of publications including the Independent, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and the Evening Standard. He is a regular commentator on broadcasting, business and technology and contributes occasionally to Conservative Home.
Ed wrote about the campaign to lift the LGBT miltary ban in Fighting With Pride, published by Amazon in January 2020.
Social Media and Contact
sailor
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