2/12/2024 0 Comments Anna kooiman returns to fox![]() He was the guy who made the wacky weatherman phenomenon really take hold I think." I felt like I learned how to be a TV host, rather than just a news anchor, when I was in Charlotte because he would throw the craziest things at me. "He's still a friend of mine and came to our wedding, his name is Mark Mathis. "I had this really quirky co-host who was just awesome," Kooiman remembers with a smile. That led to the opportunity for Kooiman to go "home", when she was hired by (then-Fox affiliate) WCCB-TV in Charlotte to co-host a four-hour morning news show. She added weekend anchoring duties at the station in Wilmington before leaving in January 2007 for a morning anchor and reporter job at WNWO-TV in Toledo, Ohio. I remember we (the reporters in the newsroom) would all think about our resume tapes, and how do you get to the next job?"Īs Kooiman's talents grew, so did her responsibilities. It just lit a fire in me, and I said 'what am I going to do to get to the next thing. "I took it as a challenge Jon," Kooiman said in a Skype interview while walking her dog Baxter along Bondi Beach. Kooiman turned that opportunity into her first job as a television news reporter, which often meant going out and covering stories as a "one-man band", where she would shoot and edit her own video for the stories she covered. Kooiman remembers the very first day of that internship, which she talks about at 4:30 of the podcast, helping solidify her desire to work in this business. I was the main nightside news anchor at the station during that time. In the Summer of 2004, Kooiman got an internship in the news department of local ABC station in Wilmington. But, one of the professors recommended me for courtside reporting at UNCW (basketball) games, and they were broadcast live on Fox Sports, and of course I thought I was really good. "Seems like a lot of newscasters are going around with their Fisher-Price microphone going 'Oh, I want to be the next Barbara Walters or Katie Couric'," she says. Kooiman majored in communication studies, but she says she still wasn't positive about what she wanted to do. ![]() She played sports at Meyers Park High School, softball and track, and continued her track career when she enrolled at UNCW. Her first job as a teenager was in the warehouse of her parents' business, the Peppermint Forest Christmas Shop in Pineville, NC. Growing up near Charlotte, Kooiman did not have her sights set early on being in television news. People are looking at me like I have three heads going 'What, cranberry sauce? Right now? What is Thanksgiving?' since they obviously don't celebrate Thanksgiving here for the most part." It was weird being in the grocery store looking for cranberry sauce and things. We did celebrate thanksgiving with some of our American friends who live here in Bondi Beach. "In November, it's starting to get chilly there in North Carolina, same when I was living in New York and Ohio. "It's hard to get used to, to be honest," Kooiman says of living in a new country. Anna left Fox News Channel in New York last year, when her husband Tim got a job opportunity in his native Australia. But, it's not a job that now has the reporter/anchor/host more than nine thousand miles from her childhood home in North Carolina. Assignments and stories have taken Anna Kooiman across the United States in the dozen years since she graduated from UNC Wilmington. ![]() When you work in television news, you have to be ready, willing and able to go where your job takes you. You can listen to the entire interview with Anna Kooiman on the "1on1 with Jon Evans" podcast for free by clicking the link inside this story.
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