'Always good to be back': After 42 years as Fox 10 anchor, Ron Hoon absences cause a stir
You might not guess that every time a local news anchor goes on vacation their absence sets off alarm bells among viewers.
Yet here we are.
Whenever Ron Hoon, a co-anchor of “Fox 10 AZAM” on Fox 10 in Phoenix, goes on vacation, the questions start. Where is he? What happened to him? When is he coming back?
Relax, people. Everyone is entitled to some vacation time.
“Honestly, I'm a little surprised to be a trending story every time I go on vacation,” Hoon said. "But it's nice. It's great.”
It’s also a little weird, and kind of funny.
“I got a message right before I left on this last vacay where my son said, ‘Dad, you think the Valley is ready for you to be gone for a week?’ And I said maybe I should send out some alerts.”
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Hoon came to Fox 10 in Phoenix in 1982
Underlying all of this, of course, is the ultimate compliment: Viewers care enough about Hoon to want to make sure he’s coming back. TV news is a notoriously fickle industry; anchor changes are a relatively common occurrence.
But not with Hoon.
He came to Fox 10, which was then known as KOOL-TV, in 1982. And never left. The morning show started in 1997; he joined it in 1998.
“You know, viewers will ask about people who were on the show five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Hoon said. “So I guess we have some staying power.”
Clearly. But why?
“There is something about morning TV where I think you kind of form a connection with the viewers in your audience, and they form a connection with us,” Hoon said. “Because you go on at 4:30 in the morning and they're just waking up, or they're going to grab the newspaper or they're going out for their morning walk. And we're just a part of their lifestyle.”
Morning shows are different. Because of the time they air and the sheer length of the programming, they have to provide a little bit of something for everyone, be it hard news, a visit to an elementary school, a cooking segment or whatever.
“I've been doing mornings for a very long time,” Hoon said. “And I've always said that there's plenty of bad news out there. And we cover it. But we've also got to figure a way to wake you up in a good mood. So we have got to make sure we have a good mix of fun in at same time.”
He’s had some practice. Hoon said he wanted to get into broadcasting since he was 10 years old, when his school took a field trip to KOMW, a radio station in his hometown of Oman, Washington.
“That's when I decided, ‘I'm getting into this business,’” Hoon said. “By the ’70s, I was working in radio. The ’70s were a great time to be a DJ. I mean, you're playing Elton John and Led Zeppelin and Earth, Wind and Fire."
“And then in the ’80s, I moved into TV. So I'm hired in May of 1980, in Spokane, and a couple of weeks later, a volcano explodes: Mount St. Helens, and our city is living under a couple of inches covered with volcanic ash. And it feels like it's been kind of non-stop ever since.”
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'The Number 1, most-asked question'
It is a curious existence, the life of the morning-show host. Days are different. For instance, what time does Hoon wake up?
“By the way, that is the Number 1, most-asked question,” Hoon said. “I get asked that all the time.”
Sorry. But still. …
The answer is 2:45 a.m.
Naturally, the follow-up is what time he goes to bed?
“Well, it depends,” Hoon said. “You know, when the Suns are hot, now the Dbacks, I might push a little later than usual. You know, if there's a good game, Monday Night Football or whatever. I'm a big sports fan. But generally, I try for around 6 or 6:30 (p.m.). But like I say, if there's a good game, it could be really late — like 8:15.”
Oof.
All that and he still has to be chipper. Luckily, that seems to be Hoon’s natural state.
“I think your real personality has to come out on the morning show,” he said. “I mean, you're on the air for hours, every day. And so it's got to be the real you. And I think people just relate to you, maybe, in a little bit of a deeper way.
“You know, I get that there are people who are way more famous than me that, if they're like in sports or some kind of a celebrity, and people might get confrontational with them. But I don't really deal with anything like that.”
So what does he deal with?
“I mean, for the most part, it's like, ‘Hey, I loved your show this morning, I loved your question of the day that we do every morning, we love the story that you told about whichever grade school you were at yesterday, that kind of thing,” he said. “So there's really nothing negative about it.”
Maybe that explains the staying power.
How long will Hoon stay on TV?
Hoon has no plans to step away anytime soon.
“I'm coming up on 42 years on the air in Phoenix,” he said, “and I told one of my bosses once, wouldn’t it be great if I made it to 50 years on the air? We all kind of chuckled about it at the time. I think at that point I'd maybe been on the air 25, 28 years or something like that. It seemed like it was a long way off. But now it's not so far away. And I love it.”
That leaves time for a lot of vacations, and a lot of worried viewers.
“The bottom line to it all is, you know, I think we have a lot of fans of our morning show,” Hoon said. “And I've been on the air for 40 years, and you make a lot of friends over that length of time. So I guess I could say it's nice to be missed, but it's always good to be back.”
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X, formerly known as Twitter: @goodyk.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why Ron Hoon, Fox 10 Phoenix anchor for over 40 years, isn't done yet
