For the NME rock critic, see Ian Penman

Ian Penman

Ian Penman is a British writer and, latterly, blogger. He began writing for the NME in the autumn of 1977, later contributing to various publications including Uncut, Arena, The Wire, The Face, The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Screen and German Vogue.Many of Penman's...

.

Ian Penman is a British radio broadcaster, television producer

Television producer

The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

, director and scriptwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

.

Career history

He began working for BBC's Radio Newcastle's Bedrock show in the mid-1970s. He started writing for local and national music magazine

Music magazine

A music magazine is a magazine dedicated to music and music culture. Such magazines typically include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record reviews, concert reviews and occasionally have a covermount with recorded music.-Notable music magazines:...

s in the late 1970s and carried on until the mid-1980s. To avoid confusion with the NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

 writer of the same name (who he actually preceded as both a radio and print music journalist) Penman wrote for Sounds

Sounds (magazine)

Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...

under the name Ian Ravendale, for Pop Star Weekly and The Sunderland and Washington Times as Rick O'Shea and The Northern Echo

The Northern Echo

The Northern Echo is a leading daily regional morning newspaper, serving the North East of England. The paper is based in Priestgate, Darlington. Its covers national as well as regional news. It is one of the UK's most famous provincial newspaper titles....

as Chris Coupar. Contributions to 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...

 and BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 were under his own name. From 1982 to 1992, Penman was a researcher, producer and director for Tyne Tees Television

Tyne Tees Television

Tyne Tees Television is the ITV television franchise for North East England and parts of North Yorkshire. As of 2009, it forms part of a non-franchise ITV Tyne Tees & Border region, shared with the ITV Border region...

, Border TV and the independent sector, working with Carol Vorderman

Carol Vorderman

Carol Jean Vorderman MBE is a British media personality, best known for co-hosting the popular game show Countdown for 26 years from 1982 to 2008. In September 2011 she became a co-anchor of the ITV1 panel show Loose Women....

, Muriel Gray

Muriel Gray

Muriel Gray is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.-Personal life:Gray is of partly Jewish ancestry...

, Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter is a British media personality, journalist and television presenter. She was editor for two years of The Independent on Sunday. She relinquished the job to become editor-at-large in 2002...

 and many others. He also ran River City Productions, the production wing of Stonehills Studios, the North East's largest independent facilities company.

Penman ran New College Durham

New College Durham

.New College Durham is a college of further and higher education in County Durham, England . It was founded in 1977 as a result of a merger between Neville's Cross College of Education and Durham Technical College. The college operated on two main sites near the city of Durham: Neville's Cross and...

's Music Industry Management HND for four years in the mid-1990s. He also promoted hundreds of concerts for the likes of The Bootleg Beatles

The Bootleg Beatles

The Bootleg Beatles are a Beatles tribute band. They have performed over 4,000 times since their establishment in March 1980.- History :The band's first performance was at a small student gathering in Tiverton, Devon, England. Following more low-profile gigs, the band performed a 60-date tour of...

, B'Eagles, U2our and Voulez Vous. He returned to radio and television production and journalism in the late 1990s, working again for Tyne Tees and BBC Radio Newcastle

BBC Radio Newcastle

BBC Newcastle is the BBC Local Radio service English metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, broadcasting from studios on Barrack Road in Newcastle upon Tyne.- Technical :...

. He also presented a long-running programme for Wear FM and was broadcast journalism

Broadcast journalism

Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are "broadcast", that is, published by electrical methods, instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. Broadcast methods include radio , television , and, especially recently, the Internet generally...

 tutor at the WOLF-FM

WOLF-FM

WMVN is a Rhythmic Adult Contemporary radio station serving the Syracuse market. WMVN operates at 100.3 MHz on the FM dial. A separate translator, W243AB, serves the city of Syracuse, New York on the 96.5 frequency...

 community and Internet Radio Project. In the 00's he concentrated on writing television drama

Dramatic programming

Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...

, including Death Of A Pirate about the 1960s pop entrepreneur and pirate radio pioneer Reg Calvert. Penman works as a media and entertainment consultant, does freelance PR and recently taught the Media Marketing module to the University of Sunderland

University of Sunderland

The University of Sunderland is located in Sunderland, north east England. The university has more than 17,500 students, including 7,000-plus international students from some 70 countries....

's Media Production MA intake.

Penman also undertakes freelance corporate video scriptwriting and production work, often in conjunction with the Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

-based Lodestone Productions company. In association with Lodestone

Lodestone

A lodestone or loadstone is a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite. They are naturally occurring magnets, that attract pieces of iron. Ancient people first discovered the property of magnetism in lodestone...

 he produced, directed, presented and conducted the interviews for "Vox and Rugs and Rock n' Roll", the first sell-through DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

for The Bootleg Beatles. He also works as a journalist, lecturer and broadcaster in both the UK and the Canary Islands.

Most recently, under his 'Ian Ravendale' byline Penman has been freelancing for the Classic Rock series of magazines, along with work for travel, true crime and general publications.