Aaron Brickle

Dr. Lewis Knight is a former radio and television professional, with vast experience in producing, directing, and hosting a wide variety of programs on various media. He is also the founder of Knight Line Productions, a company dedicated to producing quality commercials, presentations, and other forms of media. Dr. Knight is currently Associate Professor of Media Communication at Southern Wesleyan University. He is Senior Producer for the Carolina Institute for Faith and Culture. 

ME: So, what’s your name?

KNIGHT: [Loudly] Lewis Knight! Is that a good radio voice?

ME: [Laughs] Yes! So tell me a little about yourself.

KNIGHT: Well that’s kind of a broad question. I am a professor of media communications at Southern Wesleyan University. I’m married to the “Doll”; between us, we have four kids [and] seven grandkids. I play golf. Love reading, love movies, love TV, love good commercials, hate bad commercials. I’m a news junkie. Aaand, I’m politically active.

ME: So what was your career before coming to teach at the University?

KNIGHT: I was a circus clown. No. I was retired before coming to the University. My career history is varied; I started out in radio, in 1977. As an undergraduate student, I took a radio job. I was an Aeronautical Engineering student, and I started out as a disk jockey playing Top 40 music and just, absolutely, was bored to tears. Someone asked me if I’d want to read the news instead and I jumped on it. I’m not a Top 40 guy, as you probably know. So I started reading morning news, and then a fella heard me reading morning news and ask me if I wanted to anchor a new newscast they were doing; it was Cox Cable TV and it was when cable was just starting out and they didn’t know what to do with it, so… It was in south Jersey and I anchored a 5 o’clock news cast for, eh, a month plus. And really at that point in time it was just a matter of just having a job so I could earn some money; I didn’t really think anything about it.

But I hated anchoring. It was back in the 70’s, 1977 or ’78, you had to have bright lights, cameras were bad so they didn’t see well and that was… I had to wear a suit all day, and I was just all sweaty and greasy and I’d look… I was horrible on set. I was nervous. I didn’t like being in front of the camera. And the guy who was producing the newscast—a guy named Joe Durrant—used to produce the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was hosting it. He had a good eye for TV, and he said I had a good face for radio. And so we moved me off of the desk. But he did like my reporting and he liked my voice and he liked the way I wrote my stories, so he asked me if I’d like to be a field reporter, and I’d only have to be on camera for five or six seconds, but I’d have to learn how to shoot and edit. So I started reporting, and I picked up a camera and I edited, and I learned the process of shooting news and editing; and I fell in love with the process of video recording and editing. Not necessarily so much the news itself, but the process of putting together a story—I liked the story-telling.

From there I went to Texas because… well, [actually], in the meantime I got an internship at WCAU, which was a CBS owned and operated station in Philadelphia. And I was working their morning news shift, and I ended up getting a job there as assistant operations manager for morning news operations. And I wasn’t real pleased [sic], because I couldn’t shoot and edit and stuff because it was a union market. So I had a job in hand, but it wasn’t the job I was looking for. So I looked around at states that had… Right-To-Work states, where I didn’t have to deal with the union; I didn’t like the union process. And Texas was a state that was pretty open and had a lot of job opportunities, a lot of listings for photographers and reporters; and I didn’t necessarily want to be a reporter, but I wanted to shoot and edit, and I liked that. So I applied for four jobs in Texas. Got all four. […] Two [were] in Beaumont. One was an independent station—a WB station now we’d call it, back then it wasn’t. And then one was a PBS station in Houston, KUHT—the oldest, the first, public broadcast station in the nation. And I liked that because they were doing investigative reporting type stories. What they were looking for was a senior videographer to go out to shoot and edit for, kinda “mini-documentaries,” long-form investigative reporting. And they had a documentarian there by the name of Bob Cousins, and I worked under him and I worked with a producer named Mike August, and a reporter named Monica [garbled last name]. They’re still dear friends of mine, Monica and Mike; they come and stay at our house here in South Carolina actually. And so we did some really, really cool stuff.

In the meantime, there was an offer to be the producer of a morning show—6:00 AM edition of Good Morning Houston. They were looking for a senior photographer. And that was kind of interesting to me because what was nice about it is it wasn’t news, and you could be more creative. It was fashion shoots and food and that sort of stuff, and I liked the idea of being more creative with that. And so I moved over to ABC. It was Cap City Station at the time, but Cap City’s bought ABC, so we were an ABC owned and operated station and I did that for about 12 years. Within six months of being there, they asked me if I’d fill in for the producer of their nine o’clock show, which was called Good Morning Houston, while she went on maternity leave. And I ended up filling in for her for the rest of the 12 years I was there at the station. So I produced Good Morning Houston and I produced the 6:00 AM edition. I was able to keep my gear, and I still liked to shoot and edit stuff; and they built me a nice production suite and that sort of stuff for… I guess, my good work, I don’t know. It was kind of like a gift to me. And I always had the best cameras, and the best stuff. And I was still a producer. I was the only producer that was a shooter as well.

But my show was going away and I knew it was going away, […] and I went and took the LSAT so they’d send me to law school to get my degree, ‘cause they wanted me to be a news director and ABC likes their news directors to be lawyers. So I took the LSATs and I thought about going back to school and I said, “I just don’t wanna do morning news.” I’d been in meetings, and we were having debates every day about how I saw the morning news was going to be, the news block, and the station manager, current news director, and programing director… we couldn’t see eye to eye. So I decided to leave broadcasting. And I took a chance on myself and started a production company in 1992. And I ran that production company from 1992 to 2005, when I retired way too early. My wife and I bought a ranch out in hill country Texas, out in a town called Wimberly, just southwest of Austin. And at that point in time, I either lost my mind, which many people that hear a word from God are accused of losing their mind. And I was desperately aware of how bad media was in our nation and how we needed some sanity back in it, and some moral compass. So I went back to school and got my Masters’ degree and my PhD—Masters’ degree at Texas State, PhD at UT. I taught at both places. I was teaching advertising and broadcasting at Texas State, and I was teaching digital media and broadcasting at UT, while I was getting my two degrees.

They were both big secular, state universities, and I could see how students in Texas (similar to students in South Carolina) are conservative, good Christian kids that come from hard-working families with really good morals and good moral compasses, and the sorts of things that were important to me, and they were being strong-armed by the professors to liberal ideologies, atheism. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. So I started looking for Christian universities to teach at. I thought I could have a better impact if I had a group of students who were free to be who they are. So I interviewed a number of Christian universities. And at the last minute, I was about to take a job, I got a phone call from a friend of mine and he said I should talk to Southern Wesleyan University, and I fell in love with the place. I’ve been here three years now.

That’s the short version.

ME: That’s the short version. Okay! So you mentioned the moral insanity of contemporary media. So then what do you think, or what would you say, is the importance of Christianity in modern media, and the Humanities in general?

KNIGHT: Well, as you know as a student of mine, a lot of my research has been in ethics; and, you know, I talk about the dead philosophers and the different philosophies of moral reasoning or, as we know it as, ethics. And if you look at the better part of each one of these philosophers that we all discuss in philosophy classes, or in any business ethics or media ethics [classes], at the heart of all of them is Christian ethos. The better parts of them; you know some of them go astray in certain areas. But if you look at the nugget at the center of any of these ethical philosophies, you’ll find Christ at the heart of it all. And they wouldn’t, I would say, profess to that. And yet, knowing the Bible, you can see where it’s all encompassing in these philosophical theories.

ME: So, those philosophies, they would expand to more than just media, right?

KNIGHT: Oh, sure sure. Ethics is ethics; moral reasoning is moral reasoning. And we’re all sinners! [Laughs] And we’re saved by Christ I understand that. However, my life should be about trying to be more Christlike; and I don’t care if I’m in media, or right now, in the middle of campaign season, if I’m in politics… oh wait… I don’t know if ethics and politics go together. Well anyway, if I’m in business or law… well, I’m not sure about that one either. But, no matter what I’m doing in my daily life, I think, in my activities, jobs, sports, if I can be more Christlike in my behavior, at the end of the day I’m happier. I can go to sleep at night. Put my head down, and I’m out.

ME: So then, a lot of media, and I guess various professions in general, have started taking a pretty significant, almost aggressive, stance towards Christian professionals in their field. How do we respond to that then?

KNIGHT: Are you saying that Christians in media are under attack?

ME: It certainly seems that way, toward Christian ideologies anyway.

KNIGHT: Yeah, I think a lot of conservative, or traditional beliefs are under attack in a lot of media. However, more and more, you’re seeing, [for example], the rise of Christian movies now. And I hate to call them “Christian” movies, but movies with good Christian values are on the rise. And with great ticket sales. You know, people are hungry for decent media right now. And what’ll happen, from my point of view, is, if you look at ratings in like TV and movie sales and ticket sales and stuff like that, Disney movies with […] full feature animations… big money. Christian movies, big money. Something like “Fifty Shades of Disgustingness,” poor ticket sales. On the television stations, you go to ABC, NBC, CBS, where it’s very liberal—you know, Christians are haters, you’ve gotta have gay marriage, you’ve gotta have this, you know. And people are rebelling against the lockstep tyranny of liberal, atheist, alternative lifestyle, attack. I mean, it’s an attack. And their ratings are going down, for those that are putting out trash and lies. Ratings are going up for online, or just say, Fox news channel. News Max, and those who aspire to do more traditional type reporting, less subjective, more news oriented. I’m not saying Fox News is totally subjective, but it’s not as “right” as MSNBC is “left.” And they do, I think, deal with media in a lot of their programming from a Christian point of view, and every one of them would probably not be afraid or ashamed to say so in the workplace.

ME: Ok. So, I guess that’s it.

KNIGHT: Do you want the long version of my job history before you go? [Chuckles]

ME: Well… I don’t know if I’ve got time for that. I don’t know if the recording will last.

KNIGHT: Yeah, and it’s almost time for lunch anyway.

ME: All right, well, thank you for providing an interview.

KNIGHT: Yes. Glad to do it.