Fox 9 morning news anchor Alix Kendall announced this week that she’s retiring after 25 years. The station is giving the Minneapolis native a real Minnesota Goodbye by airing Kendall’s favorite moments during the 7 and 9 a.m. hours each day until her final broadcast on Sept. 6.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while now,” Kendall said. “I don’t want to jinx it, but I have a passion for screenwriting that’s been on the back burner for 40 years now. A small film company is interested in a screenplay I wrote and the timing is right for me. I’m ready for something new.”
Kendall, 63, helped Fox 9 launch its morning news show in 1999. She also hosts the lifestyle-themed 9 a.m. “Good Day” show.
Growing up in South Minneapolis, Kendall had a potential career in broadcasting in the back of her mind. Her mother was a switchboard operator at KMSP-TV and later worked on a children’s TV show featuring Donald Lynn “Roundhouse Rodney” Dwyer. “My mother said you could do anything you put your mind to if you worked hard,” she said.
But after graduating from Roosevelt High School and dropping out of the University of Minnesota after a short stint, Kendall spent her early 20s “as a bit of a wild child” before undergoing an intense 18 months studying broadcasting at the late Brown Institute.
She spent her early career in radio, working for a series of small stations in Nebraska and Minnesota, where she worked as the evening DJ on the station now known as 93X.
“They decided to change the format and I was one of several people who were fired,” she said. “At the time, I did some soul searching. Did I really want to continue in radio? A friend worked at WCCO and I was interested in television.”
Kendall went on to secure what she called a “loose” internship at the station. “It was not your classic reporter experience,” she said. “I listened to scanners, learned a bit about news copy, watched the workings of a newsroom.”
That led to another series of moving her way through multiple markets, this time in television, including stints in Austin, Minn., Albuquerque and Cincinnati before she landed at Fox 9.
‘Kaleidoscope of memories’
Since announcing her impending retirement on the air Monday morning, Kendall has been experiencing “a kind of kaleidoscope of memories, mostly bright, beautiful and eye opening.”
But there were also some tough times. She recalled living through the potential Y2K disaster soon after she started at Fox 9 (“we all stayed in the newsroom overnight, hoping everything didn’t just shut off”), the 9/11 terrorist attacks (she was six months pregnant at the time) and the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath (“I could smell the fires from my house”).
Kendall had plenty of wonderful times, too, many centered around the early, more freewheeling days of her career that included everything from delivering Christmas trees to needy families to starting an impromptu dance off when the satellite from the network went down and she had airtime to fill.
“We always embraced Halloween, too,” she said. “There’s a part of me that’s a theater kid that’s always there. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of heartfelt moments.”
What’s next
Kendall said she’s looking forward to working one last Minnesota State Fair, a world she grew up in and worked at in numerous capacities over the years.
The Monday after her final day at Fox 9, Kendall said she plans to sleep in and let at least a week or two go by without any real plans beyond hanging out with friends.When she’s ready, she’ll get back to writing.
She said one of her final projects at Brown back when she was in her 20s was to direct a short film, and the experience has stuck with her as she’s worked on a screenplay based loosely on her own life and her relationship with her brother, who has struggled with mental health issues.
“I remember thinking how much I loved it, and that I would do that someday. Here I am, 40 years later. I’m ready to dive in.”
