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Famous Like Me > Actor > J > David Jensen

Profile of David Jensen on Famous Like Me

 
Name: David Jensen  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 23rd September 1952
   
Place of Birth: Pinckneyville, Illinois, USA
   
Profession: Actor
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

David "Kid"' Jensen (* 1950 in Victoria, British Columbia) is a Canadian Radio DJ who, after beginning his career in his home country at the age of sixteen, joined Radio Luxembourg at the age of eighteen in 1968. His late-night shows concentrated on what was then referred to as "progressive" music and attracted many fans, including future British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

By 1974 Jensen was becoming a TV personality in Britain, hosting pop shows on ITV, and in the mid-1970s he worked for the then-new Radio Trent (now Trent FM) in Nottingham, one of the first legal, land-based commercial stations in the UK. In 1976 he joined the BBC's pop network, Radio 1, initially hosting a Saturday morning show from 10am-Midday, but sitting in for many other DJs, and eventually graduating to a weekday late afternoon / early evening show in the spring of 1978 from 4.30-7pm. He kept his profile high through regular appearances presenting Top of the Pops, and championed many acts who went on to achieve huge commercial success, notably The Police and Gary Numan. He was effectively a halfway house between the specialist music-orientated DJs such as John Peel and the daytime "personality jocks" such as Dave Lee Travis.

In 1980, Jensen left Radio 1 to work for the then-new CNN in Atlanta, but he returned a year later, presenting the weekday evening show from 8-10pm (later extended to run from 7-10 pm). Soon afterwards he dropped the "Kid" name, although he would still be popularly known by it for many years to come. He now hosted a mid-evening show dominated by indie-rock, but which also featured interviews with mainstream acts such as Duran Duran, and was the first show to champion Frankie Goes To Hollywood, long before their commercial success. He remained a regular Top of the Pops presenter and struck up a legendary partnership with John Peel.

In 1984, Jensen was lured away by Capital Radio, for whom he presented a weekday morning show (moving to weekday drivetime - as it was now called - in 1987) and the Network Chart, the UK's first syndicated commercial radio show which went out every Sunday between 5 and 7 pm, directly opposite the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 show. Its style and ethos anticipated a number of regulatory changes between 1988 and the early 1990s, which pushed commercial radio away from the more localised and less pop-dominated form it took in its early years, towards the homogenised, purely pop-driven form it now takes where stations are centrally owned and often almost indistinguishable from each other. Its anticipation of commercial radio's future direction is far more important than the chart it actually broadcast, which never equalled the definitive status of the official chart (then compiled by Gallup) used by Radio 1, even though it was considerably more up-to-date until the compilation of the official chart was sped up in 1987.

While presenting the Network Chart David Jensen became ITV's unofficial "face" of pop music, presenting pop shows such as the children's series "Razzmatazz" and also "The Roxy", an ill-fated attempt to compete with Top of the Pops. He would continue to regularly comment on pop-related stories in ITN news bulletins for some time after he left the Network Chart in 1993, when he was replaced by Neil Fox. He continued to present the weekday drivetime show on what was now called Capital FM until 1998, at which point he left for a rival London FM station, Heart 106.2, presenting a weekend afternoon show from 2-6pm. In 2002 he returned to Capital and since then has been heard on its oldies service Capital Gold, firstly presenting the Monday - Thursday late noght show from 10pm - 1am, before taking over his current weekday mid-morning slot in February 2003, which goes out from 10am-1pm. Capital Gold broadcasts on mediumwave in London and other areas, but also on digital satellite television.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article David Jensen