MANILA, OCTOBER 3, 2012 – The History Channel introduced the host of its latest program, Hidden Cities: Extreme, Simon Yin, to selected media today in a press conference held at Aracama Filipino Cuisine in Fort Bonifacio.
A director, producer, actor, and host hailing from Atlanta Georgia, Yin is best known for hosting stints with Turner Networks, MTV in New York and his Mustard Collective production house in Hong Kong. As host of Hidden Cities: Extreme, this media veteran will faces challenges of a more visceral nature, be it in the form of engaging in Filipino stick fighting (eskrima), eating tarantulas in Thailand and taking part in a buffalo race in Indonesia.
Irreverent and animated in person as his on-air persona, Yin said that the appeal of Extreme lay in his status as an “everyman”, a far cry from the usual template of hosts to be found on broadcast and cable television.
To liven up the proceedings, invited media were asked to take part in a balut speed-eating competition, a task which adobo’s managing editor, Mikhail Lecaros, failed spectacularly at.
Hidden Cities: Extreme premieres in the Philippines on the History Channel on October 29, Monday, at 9:30 pm with an episode featuring Yin learning – the hard way – the rigors and pain involved in becoming an eskrima practitioner, and scaling a coconut tree in pursuit of a reqarding glass of tuba (fermented coconut wine).
When asked by adobo magazine about what it took to convince his loved ones to let him try out some of the program’s more dangerous stunts, Yin, who, in a former life, had set out to be a doctor, laughed and said, “I don’t tell them until we’re done shooting it!”
