John Hook, the longest-serving news anchor in FOX 10 Phoenix history, is retiring after 33 years at KSAZ-TV, the station announced. Hook will deliver his final broadcast on September 14, 2026, closing out a 43-year broadcasting career that took him from small radio stations in Arizona to the anchor desk of one of the state's most-watched newscasts.
Hook joined the FOX 10 news team in August 1993, according to FOX 10 Phoenix, arriving just before the station completed its transition from KTSP-TV into a Fox affiliate in 1994. The station itself traces back to October 1953, when it first went on the air as KOOL-TV, according to Wikipedia. When Hook arrived, he co-anchored weekend broadcasts alongside Linda Williams, another veteran Phoenix anchor who herself retired from FOX 10 in January 2024 after more than three decades at the station, per a Facebook post from Williams.
A Career Built on Breaking News and Big Interviews
Hook's on-air career began in 1983 as a reporter and anchor at KARZ/KOOL Radio in Phoenix, per the station's account of his career, before he moved on to news director duties at KBBT Radio in Casa Grande, Arizona, and later worked at KREX-TV in Grand Junction, Colorado. He returned to Arizona in 1985 to anchor and report for KVOA-TV in Tucson before eventually landing back in Phoenix. Over the decades that followed, the station notes, he reported live from Candlestick Park during the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, filed dispatches from Northridge, California hours after the 1994 quake, and covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles.
His political résumé is similarly deep: Hook moderated the nationally broadcast 2000 Republican primary debate at Gammage Auditorium, tracked national politics across seven presidential primaries, and anchored coverage of 14 national political conventions. He interviewed Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, including a 2011 sit-down with Obama at the White House, and covered both of Senator John McCain's presidential bids. He also covered the funerals of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and John McCain, and reported on the impeachments of Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham and President Bill Clinton, according to the station.
Sports, Cold Cases and a National Political Stage
Sports fans in the Valley likely recognize Hook from his coverage of four Super Bowls, three World Series, two NBA Finals, and the 1997 Rose Bowl between Arizona State and Ohio State. He also covered the Arizona Diamondbacks' World Series run against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks. Beyond sports and politics, Hook spent years investigating one of the country's most notorious unsolved celebrity murders, the 1978 killing of actor Bob Crane.
In 2016, Hook secured permission from the Maricopa County Attorney to retest DNA blood evidence from the cold case, and his findings became the basis for his book Who Killed Bob Crane?: The Final Close-Up, published by Brisance Books Group LLC in February 2017. The November 2016 retesting, conducted on blood evidence tied to suspect John Carpenter's rental car, turned up one unknown male DNA profile and a second degraded sample, according to KJZZ. That testing consumed all remaining DNA evidence without conclusively resolving the decades-old homicide. Hook's national profile carried into his final years on air; in May 2024, Fox Television Stations tapped him as a featured local anchor contributor for Battleground, a national daily political program covering swing states during the presidential campaign, according to T Dog Media.
The Kari Lake Years and a Newsroom Legacy
For 22 years, from 1999 until March 2021, Hook co-anchored evening newscasts alongside Kari Lake, forming one of the longest-running and highest-rated anchor duos in Arizona television history, according to TIME. Lake left KSAZ in March 2021 ahead of her 2022 run for Arizona governor. A 2019 clip of off-camera studio video, showing Hook cautioning Lake about social media blowback, resurfaced nationally during that campaign, per TIME's reporting.
Hook also hosted Newsmaker, described by the station as Phoenix television's longest-running public affairs interview program, from 1994 until this year. Over his career he anchored coverage that traces back to a broadcasting lineage in Phoenix stretching to Bill Close, who built Channel 10's unified news operation in 1964 and was known as the “Dean of Arizona Newscasters” during his 18-year television career, according to Wikipedia. Hook's departure also echoes other long-tenured exits at the station, including morning anchor Rick D'Amico, who retired in 2016 after 30 years with FOX 10, per a Facebook post marking his send-off.
Honors and What Comes Next
Hook's list of accolades includes more than a dozen Emmy Awards, five Associated Press Anchor of the Year honors, and induction into the NATAS Silver Circle in 2016. In 2002, he was inducted into the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication's Alumni Hall of Fame at Arizona State University, an honor that first recognized sportscaster Al Michaels when the hall was established in 1993, according to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Hook also established the John Hook Journalism Scholarship Endowment at Arizona State University.
Hook, who has said the Arizona community has been kind and supportive of him, plans to spend more time with his wife Gina and their three adult children after he steps away from the anchor desk. He has said he wants to travel, dive the Great Barrier Reef, surf, ski, play golf, play music, volunteer and mentor others in the years ahead. Asked what he'll miss most, Hook has said it's simply the FOX 10 team he worked alongside for more than three decades.
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