John Hook signing off from FOX 10 after 33-year run: ‘You’ve given me an incredible life’

When John Hook walked into the Channel 10 newsroom in August 1993, the station still broadcast under the CBS banner. Phoenix’s population hovered around 700,000, and the Suns’ run to the NBA Finals that summer had just put the city on the national map.

Three decades later, Hook is ending his career.

The longest-serving anchor in FOX 10 history will deliver his final broadcast Sept. 14, closing a 33-year run at the station.

“That’s half my life,” Hook told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Thursday. “And I thought, that’s enough.”

Hook, 66, said the decision evolved gradually with his wife, Gina, planting the seed.

“Nothing’s guaranteed,” he said. “If I’m going to get out in the world and explore some things, I got to do it because the clock’s ticking.”

Somewhere in between the news, Hook wrote a book.

“Who Killed Bob Crane?” examined the unsolved 1978 murder of the “Hogan’s Heroes” star in a Scottsdale apartment, a case Hook called quintessentially Arizonan. He wrote it in the mornings after getting his kids off to school, then headed to the station, all while covering the 2016 presidential conventions on the road.

“The busiest year of my life,” he said. “I never got sick. There was no time.”

John Hook said he is open to whatever comes next, with one exception

What’s next after a 43-year career in television news?

“I am open to any and all things except politics,” he said, laughing. “I could not morally make the compromises that job requires.”

He reserved his final words for the viewers.

“Thank you. You’ve given me an incredible life,” he said. “They’re really smart. They’re really intuitive. They know who’s real and who’s not.”

Hook is a 2002 inductee into the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Hall of Fame at Arizona State University.

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