A huge huge shame. In recent years he pretty much has been the BBC News Channel considering how much both the evening service has been scaled back and how mundane the morning slots are. I think only Huw Edwards or Emily Maitliss would be a bigger loss to BBC television news, but even they seem easier to replace than Simon.
Will be interesting to see where he turns up - hope he doesn't out end up you know where.
Major blow for the channel imo. Simon was so witty and good at dropping one-liners, he made boring news more interesting by how he’d present such news. He’ll be very much missed by me when I watch the channel in future, as Brekkie mentioned he pretty much made the news channel its own thing in the afternoons. It also means that its probably unlikely Afternoon Live will come back unless they find a new host to present it in a similar style.