Hoyt Smith

Setting his sights on a career in broadcast at an early age, KDFC Morning personality Hoyt Smith found his first opportunity on radio at age 14 as a freshman in high school at the campus station. Later at San Diego State, Smith signed on with that campus’ student radio station and a year later joined San Diego’s new NPR affiliate, KPBS-FM. There he learned the basics of classical announcing as well as news and public affairs. Simultaneously, Smith landed a job at pop station KARL-FM in nearby Carlsbad, California and as an adult personality at AM radio station KFMB in San Diego. On a visit home to see family in San Francisco, Smith took a tour of innovative FM station K-101 and three weeks later landed his first fulltime job. Since then he has skipped around the Bay Area radio dial working for two NBC affiliates and after a brief stint as morning host and Program Director in Portland, came back in 1984 to Adult Contemporary station KLOK-FM. Brown Broadcasting bought KLOK-FM in 1987 and launched the nation’s second Smooth Jazz station, KKSF, where Smith hosted afternoons for nearly a dozen years. Classical music called to him again in 1999 when asked to host afternoons on KDFC. He has hosted the Morning Show on Classical KDFC since 2003. Readers of San Francisco Magazine have voted him “Favorite Bay Area Radio Host” four years in a row. Most recently Hoyt has been named to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, Class of 2016.