About Steve Jenner
Half of the two brothers who were the founding directors of two ILR stations covering Derbyshire’s Peak District and parts of Staffordshire, Steve claims to understand more about the listening habits of sheep than any other man alive. He spent 15 years in this role being an active presenter throughout on all the main airshifts including weekday breakfast for a three – year ‘stretch’.
Before that he co-founded and presented on around twenty temporary broadcast stations and has worked as a gigging DJ since 1973 and was a University resident DJ in Scotland in the late seventies, working as compere and support DJ for many of the top touring acts of the day. He has also worked as a radio and TV ‘talking head’ for a major language campaign organisation, appearing on over 80% of BBC local radio stations at various points and paid appearances on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Sky, CNN and Russian state TV amongst others. He’s been on the famous red BBC Breakfast sofa 5 times.
Since selling the stations, he went on to present for Radio Caroline, North and Flashback for over three years, presenting a number of listener Top15s and as a guest presenter on Manx Radio on behalf of Caroline North before Caroline’s management parted company with him. He has performed 10 live shows from the Ross Revenge on five visits to the boat and pre-recorded many more for overnight transmission, and acted as occasional guide to visitors on broadcast weekend tours around it.
Since then his retirement has been disturbed by a dozen or more excellent radio stations from various parts of the world inviting him to join them, one being LV18 Radio Mi Amigo. He presents a weekly show for the station and has joined the on – board team for live ‘all vinyl 45s’ shows from the deck of the LV18, making him one of very few presenters who have presented live shows from the decks of the two boats moored around the UK coast currently still used for the purposes of broadcasting music from the offshore years.
This brings him full circle, as his initial broadcasting experience was gained on a highly – rated and much – missed Nottingham city onshore pirate station. That said, he still presents early morning weekday breakfast for his local Staffordshire / Cheshire DAB station Churnet Sound, and recently was involved in the sale of a local Peak District – based online radio station he helped to set up. He never misses an opportunity to thank Ronan O’Rahilly and other commercial radio pioneers for the opportunity to make much of his living out of what he has loved doing for many years.
He circumvents the frustration of not living by the coast by owning and travelling the country on a narrowboat, his current studio premises and home being a canalside cottage in the Staffordshire Moorlands. He’s also written or co-written four books about music and radio, one of which made number 1 in the UK on Amazon’s relevant sales chart. Until recently he was a contributor to a top London – based music review website.
He was invited by Derbyshire County Council’s museum service to stage an exhibition about the development of radio in the Peak District just recently and this display help the museum break footfall records for the year and Nottinghamshire County Council recently accepted many broadcasting artefacts which were in his possession into museum stock for future displays. Married to Sue for 45 years and counting, they have grown up children and rapidly growing grandchildren.
He loves music, canals, narrow boats, trains, impossible adventures in radio (motto; if it’s too bonkers, you’re too old), listeners, proper beer, a nice walk, a nice pub, football, driving an absurd open-topped car, time spent with friends and family, travel, writing and trying to reduce his business interests.
