What he didn’t realize, though, was to what extent. Knight, who counts Knight Broadcasting and its four area radio stations among the companies he owns, turned that passion for air travel into a career in the radio business. The transition from flying to broadcasting didn’t come without some turbulence along the way, however.
Knight said he first became enamored with flying while observing planes at his hometown Santa Barbara Airport.
“The first time I had a chance to ride in a plane,” he said, “I was hooked and just knew that I wanted to be a pilot.”
He started taking lessons and piloting small planes not long after that, and got his license and several ratings at just 17. His parents weren’t exactly thrilled with his choice of hobby, but they supported him along the way.
“They jokingly said they weren’t sure if I was from this family,” he said of his parents’ initial reactions, noting that he didn’t even talk about it with his mom so as not to upset her. “Not only did they have no interest in piloting, but they don’t even like to fly, period.”
It was while attending school at Santa Ynez Valley Union High that Knight was presented with the opportunity that would eventually shape his career. Some recruiters came to the campus looking for students who were interested in working evenings and weekends at a radio station that was planning to begin broadcasting out of Solvang, a first for the Valley.
Knight saw the potential job as a way to finance his high-in-the-sky hobby. “The irony was that I went to work in radio to pay for my flying,” he said. “I didn’t know much about radio, nor was I searching for a radio job, it just kind of came to me.”
Knight continued to work in radio, while also flying, throughout high school and college, where he earned a degree in public relations with a minor in journalism and broadcasting. He eventually landed a job as a helicopter pilot in the San Joaquin Valley with a TV news station, which mainly involved providing morning and evening traffic reports. The hours allowed him to continue to work on the radio in the afternoons.
Knight struggled to find gainful full-time employment as a commercial pilot in the early 1990s, so he began to start really focusing on the radio business. Whereas before he used his degrees to further his career in aviation, he was now using them “to catapult my career into broadcasting,” he said. “Flying went from becoming my career to my hobby, and broadcasting became my career.”
He formed Knight Broadcasting in the late 90s and purchased his first station in 2001. The company eventually grew to four stations: KSYV 96.7 FM and KRAZ 105.9 FM, which broadcast throughout the Valley, and KSMA 1410 AM and KUHL 1440 AM, which broadcast in the Santa Maria and Lompoc markets.
As the radio industry was forced to evolve and adapt to the growing technologies of the past decade, Knight said his company has been aided by sticking to its core principle of remaining local.
“It’s important to me that my employees live here, eat here and breathe here,” said Knight, who has 12 workers. “They can pronounce the street names and when we hear news, generally somebody on the staff will know somebody who was impacted by it. We’re a relatively small community and we like it that way.”
Tyler Storey, who is a morning host and afternoon DJ on KRAZ out of Solvang, said he likes the fact that the on-air personalities are viewed as members of the community.
“There are a lot of big corporate stations that kind of broadcast pretty generically because it goes to everybody,” said Storey, who has lived in the Valley for 22 years and is also an alumnus of Santa Ynez High. “(We have) a more personal feel. Even with the DJs on-air, there’s a lot of conversation back and forth, on-air with the callers, and it’s nice to tie into the community instead of just broadcasting to who knows.”
Knight said he doesn’t plan on expanding his business beyond its four stations anytime in the near future, but he is actively looking for ways to remain connected with the communities those existing stations service. That is especially important in our current digital age, he notes, with so many options available for consumers to get music and news.
“The most important thing that we can do as a broadcaster is to take entertainment and combine it with information,” Knight said. “What your iPod can’t tell you is what those black clouds are, whether the freeway is open or closed, whether the school has been locked down for whatever reason.
“With our radio stations, we have live, local people,” he continued. “In the industry as a whole, (other broadcasters have) eliminated a lot of local people and they’re more or less just playing music. I think that is short-sighted thinking, because now you’re competing with a device.”
Knight has been at the forefront of radio technologies before. KRAZ was the first High-Definition station on the Central Coast in 2005, but the enhanced HD format – which features CD-quality sound and allows for detailed information and alerts to display on the receiver – has been slow to gain a following in the area. He said he’s still hoping it does eventually catch on and grow.
When he’s not working with the radio business or flying, which he often does to meet with advertisers and for family vacations, Knight stays fairly busy. He lives in Ballard with his wife, Sandra, and their two elementary-aged sons. He is the school board president at his children’s school, is the vice president at the Santa Ynez Airport and sits on several boards, including the UC-Santa Barbara economic forecast board. He said being so involved in the community has helped his broadcast career.
“I’m a true believer that if you sit behind a desk and isolate yourself from what’s going on, then you can’t make the effective decisions to keep your company on the right track,” he said, noting that a lot of credit is due to his strong staff. “Going out with your staff and going to meet with clients directly, you really get in the heartbeat of what’s going on so you can give that feedback to your clients.”
As for the future of the radio industry, Knight is a firm believer that there will always be a place for local radio. Noting that it is one of the few no-cost forms of entertainment remaining, he said better days are likely ahead.
“With the economy, I think we’ve finally turned that corner and we’re starting to see everybody get a little bit of growth over the past couple of years,” he said. “It’s an exciting time. It’s never going to grow as fast as I would like it to, but as far as the hurt, I think we’ve turned that corner.”