Trevor Dann
Encyclopedia
Trevor Dann is a British
writer and broadcaster who has been associated with some of the most influential radio and television pop music programmes and events of the last 30 years.
and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
. Dann’s radio career began at BBC Radio Nottingham
in 1974. He was a producer at BBC Radio 1
from 1979 to 1983, working principally with Noel Edmonds
, Tommy Vance
, Dave Lee Travis
and John Peel
as well as developing the 25 Years of Rock
series, which later transferred to TV as The Rock 'n' Roll Years
.
In the 1980s he was a producer on BBC2’s Old Grey Whistle Test
for four years and presented his own weekly show for BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
. In 1988 he was the founding programme director of GLR
, the station which launched the radio careers of Chris Evans, Chris Morris
and Danny Baker
among others.
Production with responsibility for the revamping the network’s music policy in 1995. The Daily Star dubbed him 'Dann Dann the Hatchetman'. He became involved in a dispute with Status Quo after effectively banning their music from the station in a bid to improve its "youth" credentials. In 1996 he was appointed Head Of BBC Music Entertainment running all the BBC’s pop music production including Radio 1, Radio 2
, Top of the Pops
, Later and Glastonbury
.
He left the BBC in 2000 to join EMAP
as MD of Pop where he launched the Smash Hits Radio Show and the Smash Hits TV channel and was executive producer of the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party
for Channel 4
. Between 2002 and 2004 he presented BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's breakfast show.
in September 2006. His first book, a biography of Nick Drake
called Darker Than The Deepest Sea, was published in the UK in February 2006 by Portrait and in the USA by daCapo. He has written for The Times
, The Guardian
and The Independent
as well as Word Magazine
, Q magazine
, Mojo
and The Evening Standard
. He has also been presenting a weekly radio show called 'It's Amazing' on national DAB
station Amazing Radio
since January 2010.
for his work on Live Aid
and has several Sony Radio Awards for production and presentation. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts
and The Radio Academy
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
writer and broadcaster who has been associated with some of the most influential radio and television pop music programmes and events of the last 30 years.
Early career
Dann was educated at Nottingham High SchoolNottingham High School
Nottingham High School is a British boys' independent school situated about a mile north of Nottingham city centre. It has around 900 pupils from ages 11 to 18 and there is the adjoining Nottingham High Junior School catering for younger boys and, from September 2008, the Lovell House...
and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Fitzwilliam College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge in England.The college traces its origins back to 1869 and the foundation of the Non-Collegiate Students Board, a venture intended to offer students from less financially privileged backgrounds a chance to study...
. Dann’s radio career began at BBC Radio Nottingham
BBC Radio Nottingham
BBC Radio Nottingham is a BBC Local Radio station serving the English county of Nottinghamshire. It broadcasts on FM, AM, and digital DAB radio from studios located on London Road in Nottingham city centre.-Transmission frequences:...
in 1974. He was a producer at BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
from 1979 to 1983, working principally with Noel Edmonds
Noel Edmonds
Noel Ernest Edmonds, is an English broadcaster and executive, who made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. He has presented many light entertainment television programmes, including Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Top of the Pops, The Late, Late Breakfast Show, Telly Addicts, Noel's Saturday...
, Tommy Vance
Tommy Vance
Tommy Vance was a British pop radio broadcaster, born in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. He was one of the few music broadcasters in the United Kingdom to champion hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans...
, Dave Lee Travis
Dave Lee Travis
Dave Lee Travis , also known professionally as DLT and the Hairy Cornflake, is a British radio presenter, best known for his career on BBC Radio 1.-Early life:...
and John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
as well as developing the 25 Years of Rock
25 Years of Rock
25 Years of Rock was a 25-part radio series broadcast on BBC Radio 1 from 22 June to 7 December 1980. Each hour-long episode featured amusic and news stories from a year, starting with 1955 and finishing with 1979...
series, which later transferred to TV as The Rock 'n' Roll Years
The Rock 'n' Roll Years
The Rock 'n' Roll Years was a BBC television programme aired between 1985 and 1994. In a half-hour time slot the programme focused on a different year each week, starting with the year 1956 and ending with 1989....
.
In the 1980s he was a producer on BBC2’s Old Grey Whistle Test
Old Grey Whistle Test
The Old Grey Whistle Test was an influential BBC2 television music show that ran from 1971 to 1987. It took over the BBC2 late night slot from "Disco Two", which had been running since January 1970, while continuing to feature non-chart music. It was devised by BBC producer Rowan Ayers...
for four years and presented his own weekly show for BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is the BBC Local Radio service for the English county of Cambridgeshire. It originally broadcast from studios on Hills Road close to the train station in Cambridge - which have now moved to a new multi-million pound centre at the Cambridge Business Park on Cowley Road - ...
. In 1988 he was the founding programme director of GLR
BBC London 94.9
BBC London 94.9 is London's BBC Local Radio station, and part of BBC London. Broadcasting across Greater London and beyond on 94.9 FM, DAB, Virgin Media Channel 930, Sky Channel 0152 and also online...
, the station which launched the radio careers of Chris Evans, Chris Morris
Chris Morris (satirist)
Christopher Morris is an English satirist, writer, director and actor. A former radio DJ, he is best known for anchoring the spoof news and current affairs television programmes The Day Today and Brass Eye, as well as his frequent engagement with controversial subject matter.In 2010 Morris...
and Danny Baker
Danny Baker
Danny Baker is an English comedy writer, journalist, radio DJ and screenwriter. Since the late 1970s, he has worked for a wide range of publications and broadcasters including NME, LWT, the BBC, and Talk Radio....
among others.
Recent career
After a spell as an independent producer with his own company Confederate Broadcasting, Dann became Head of Radio 1BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
Production with responsibility for the revamping the network’s music policy in 1995. The Daily Star dubbed him 'Dann Dann the Hatchetman'. He became involved in a dispute with Status Quo after effectively banning their music from the station in a bid to improve its "youth" credentials. In 1996 he was appointed Head Of BBC Music Entertainment running all the BBC’s pop music production including Radio 1, Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
, Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
, Later and Glastonbury
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...
.
He left the BBC in 2000 to join EMAP
EMAP
Emap Limited is a British media company, specialising in the production of business-to-business magazines, and the organisation of business events and conferences...
as MD of Pop where he launched the Smash Hits Radio Show and the Smash Hits TV channel and was executive producer of the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party
Smash Hits Poll Winners Party
The Smash Hits Poll Winners Party was an awards ceremony which ran from 1988 to 2005. Each award winner was voted by readers of the Smash Hits magazine. It ended with the closure of the magazine in February 2006....
for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. Between 2002 and 2004 he presented BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's breakfast show.
Current projects
He was appointed director of the UK Radio AcademyRadio Academy
The Radio Academy is a registered charity that is dedicated to 'the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production'....
in September 2006. His first book, a biography of Nick Drake
Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...
called Darker Than The Deepest Sea, was published in the UK in February 2006 by Portrait and in the USA by daCapo. He has written for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
as well as Word Magazine
Word Magazine
Launched in 1995 by Carey Earle, Tom Livaccari and Dan Pelson, Word Magazine was one of the earliest and most influential e-zines. For over five years, Word created original stories, interviews, games, applications, music, interactive objects and art, and community spaces. Word published new...
, Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
, Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
and The Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
. He has also been presenting a weekly radio show called 'It's Amazing' on national DAB
Digital audio broadcasting
Digital Audio Broadcasting is a digital radio technology for broadcasting radio stations, used in several countries, particularly in Europe. As of 2006, approximately 1,000 stations worldwide broadcast in the DAB format....
station Amazing Radio
Amazing Radio
Amazing Radio is a national radio station broadcasting on digital radio in the United Kingdom. The station plays new music from a number of music genres including pop, rock, indie, hip hop, electronica and jazz...
since January 2010.
Awards
He won a BAFTABritish Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
for his work on Live Aid
Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...
and has several Sony Radio Awards for production and presentation. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...
and The Radio Academy
Radio Academy
The Radio Academy is a registered charity that is dedicated to 'the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production'....
.