Wayne Trout Biography

Wayne Trout Biography
WDBO WORJ WLOF WKIS WWNZ

We asked Wayne for his biography for the site. He provided a very entertaining insight.
"Well, here's the short version. I've worked in Central Fl radio for over 30 years. Started as a news trainee with WDBO-AM 580 in 1968. Hired by WORJ-FM 107.7 as announcer/news director 1969. Employed there until a co-employee broke me up and I laughed my way thru an entire newscast. Manager Tom Doyle stopped me in front of the station, and as he caught his finger in the heavy glass door, told me if I ever did it again, I'd be fired. Well, (I love Tom and have worked with him since) I don't remember exactly what I told him, however I do know my employment ended at that time. Went to WTRR-AM 1400 in Sanford for a couple of years where I worked with Bill Bauman and George Crossley. Did mid-day jock until going back to WDBO as a newsman/anchor. Worked with Perry Moore, Jim Turner, Bob Raymond, until getting fired for trying to start a union movement and the daily trip to the local bar. (Not sure which one was the key.) Wound up doing mid-days at rocker WLOF-AM 950 as Tom Clark, "the Body Beautiful". Did two years there until I quit on the air because they wanted to change the focus of my call-in show. Said in my last on-air statement, "...I would rather eat bark off a tree in the woods..." than stay here. A great moment, however yet another one that led to immediate unemployment. Did a couple of stints as a club DJ, making more than I'd ever made in radio, then went back to WDBO in the late 70's thru mid 80's as news director. Worked with market long-timers such as Reagan Smith, Pat Flannagan, Dennis Moore. New company bought the station and did not appreciate the rather laid back approach I took to the job. Last straw was they wanted me to wear a tie and appear to be managerial. Well, that obviously wasn't going to work, so I was unemployed yet again. Shortly after WDBO, I went to WKIS-AM 740, as morning anchor in 1983. Worked with market regulars Adrian Charles, Lynn Levine, Jim Philips. Got fired from there after 6 years, something about ratings. It appeared other stations had them, and I did not. Go Figure. At some point, who knows, I went to do morning news for WWNZ-AM 740. Later moved to news director then operations manager. Worked with Peter King, Dave Ross. Station sold to Clear Channel and ran it as a paid advertising shill until they switched frequencies and call letters and brought in new management. I left then, just wanting to take a sabbatical, however, based on the number of calls I've received begging me to return to the air, I believe I've retired. For all the juicy stories about drunken, pot-smoking, naked and degenerate radio people, you'll just have to wait till the lawyers clear the book. (God, if only I had pictures!!!)"

Wayne Trout announces his resignation on the air at WLOF-AM 950
courtesy of Dennis Snyder

Wayne at WLOF as Tom Clark-"The Body Beautiful"
click photo for full sized view photo courtesy of Dick Camnitz

Orlando Sentinel March 31, 1983
Wayne Trout, WDBO-AM's news director for the past 6 1/2 years, resigned rather than be fired Tuesday, joining more than a dozen employees of WDBO and its sister station, WWKA-FM (formerly WDBO-FM), who have been replaced since Bridgeport, Conn.-based Katz Broadcasting bought the two stations nine months ago. Trout said Tuesday that he had expected to be asked to resign sooner or later and was in fact "glad" to be out of the atmosphere of uncertainty. What has been happening is the typical Aftermath of an ownership change, Trout says. "They (Katz) want their own people in there. It's normal." Trout also says that WDBO's management was planning a change in its news style. "I think they want more Rin Tin Tin journalism the blood and guts stuff." Trout hopes to find a comparable job at another local radio station but says that, one way or another, he will stay in Orlando, where he's lived 25 years. WDBO's new news director will be Wayne Weinberg, who is leaving a similar position at WMPS-AM in Memphis, Tenn. Operations manager Bob Adams, a recent arrival himself and the man to whom Weinberg will report, said Tuesday that the station's reporting staff will remain the same but that the approach will be somewhat different. "We'll have more on-air street presence," Adams says. "We'll be 'activating' our news department. We'll be where the news is happening."

Wayne Trout's Memorial Service
A Personal Reminisce by Pat Flannagan

Saturday June 25, 2005 we said goodbye to Wayne Trout on a muggy, hot day at Mead Gardens in Winter Park. Word of his passing had brought some 50 to 75 friends and colleagues to the amphitheatre. Some attendees I noticed and spoke to included Tom Conlee, Scott Harris, Dick Sollom, Reagan Smith, Lynn Levine, Bob Poe and family, Dick Batchelor, Diane Kiger, Bob Church, and Wayne Weinberg. Funerals in Florida are informal affairs anyway and an exit party for someone as laidback as the dear departed demanded casual clothing. Hawaiian shirts over baggy trousers, paisley ties over bright colored shirts and slacks were the norm and even Doris Trout, Wayne's mother, was a petite presence in blue flower print, sleeveless dress.
The service began with an air check edited by John Prince. Wayne's voice sounded over the warm morning in clips of talk shows, (including a scathing tirade against George Bush that surely offended any red staters present but had most of us laughing,) newscasts, and a final man-on-the-street interview that was of course with a woman.
Wayne's old friend, Bill Bauman, spoke first (in suitable flowered shirt) recounting a friendship that went back to Vietnam-era days when they were a sort of Hawkeye/Trapper John pair in the Army National Guard. Their ability to type apparently got the two in and out of scrapes frequently. It also helped get them into the media later. Bauman was the first to mention Trout's personal life, his wild parties and his rehabilitation efforts. Many an emotionally wounded man was given space on Wayne's couch and nursed back to confidence by his own life-loving exuberance.
Lee Garen, CNN overnight anchor, spoke next, reading an email from CBS reporter Peter King, on assignment that day in Aruba. King reminisced about Wayne's mentoring at WWNZ-AM 740, encouraging him to send feeds to the network and advance his own career. Garen also spoke warmly about working with Trout.
After a couple of other speakers, I went to the front myself. I must have seemed the lady in black in my dark jacket, loose pants and charcoal straw hat. I thought Wayne would have appreciated a dramatic look. I introduced myself and said I'd worked with Wayne at WDBO-AM from 1977-1979. "Somebody had to say it," I said. "The Wayne Trout Management Philosophy: It's All Bullshit." The attendees laughed."
I remember him coming back to the news room after some meeting with upper management where they'd want us to do something like slant our reports to their list of Hot Buttons instead of what we thought was news. 'It's all bullshit' he'd say to Reagan Smith and Dennis Moore, Tom Fallin and Jay Bortz, Warren Croke and Donna Kelley and me, but we've got to show them we're creative enough to pull this off.' And you'd feel a ripple go around the room because he knew the one thing we believed about ourselves was how creative we were. Because he knew us so well he could motivate us to do a difficult job.
"And then there was his personal philosophy. I remember him on Friday afternoons, walking out of the newsroom toward the big double glass doors of the old art deco WDBO building. He'd look back at us, grin and then call out 'Let's get naked!' I was proud to have known and worked with Wayne Trout."
Other speakers included Wayne Weinberg and Jim Phillips but the most memorable to me was his massage
therapist. She said she had known Wayne professionally and particularly recalled one Christmas eve. Surprised by his making an appointment on December 24 Trout waved off Christmas concerns as she went to work on him. When she was done she asked him about his Christmas shopping. Everyone in the audience who knew him well anticipated the answer. "Hey, I'm just going to ABC Liquor next." Wayne was no scrooge but he dealt with stocking stuffers in his own way.
About 12:15 the official service ended and some 30 or so participants moved on the clubhouse of the Park
West Condominiums in downtown Winter Park. The food was great, barbecue and salad and desserts all spread around photographs of Wayne. I'd never seen his bare upper lip before because it disappeared under his trademark bushy mustache after high school. From teen years to wild hair in disco era shirts, to later pictures Trout cut a fine figure.
After eating and gossiping and reminiscing that he would have approved of, groups of people dispersed to
the unofficial Wayne Trout exit parties, at least one at Fiddler's Green, almost certainly at PR's (Mexican Restaurant) and at whatever happened to the old Harpers. At all those locations glasses were raised and toasts made to our old friend and colleague, Wayne Trout.
He would have approved of that most of all

Wayne at WDBO 1983
You'll also hear the voices of Perry Moore, Richard Bouchard and Earl Finkle

Wayne Trout Passes 6-12-05
Wayne Trout a fixture of Central Florida radio for over 30 years has died in his sleep on Friday, according to WTKS-FM 104.1's Jim Philips. Wayne was 56 years old. Details will follow as they become available. Jim Philips notes "...Many men and more women will mourn his passing."

Veteran broadcaster passes 6-14-05
Scott Maxwell Orlando Sentinel Taking Names Column
Wayne Trout, a 30-plus-year veteran of Central Florida's airwaves, tragically surprised his mother, radio peers and legions of listeners when he unexpectedly died last week. "He was his jolly old self," Doris Trout said of her 56-year-old son. "He just went to bed, and then he died." Trout worked as newsman, anchor and news director on myriad stations, including WDBO, WTRR and WKIS. While Trout's on-air persona was known by the masses, those who knew him said it was his off-air personality -- his love of life, partying and his willingness to take in the forlorn -- they remember most. "He was one of the originals," said afternoon talker Jim Philips, who both competed against and worked alongside Trout through the years. "If you or your buddy got a divorce or dumped, you could stay with Wayne. And he would turn 'em around in a couple of days." Though Trout wasn't working in the hardscrabble business when he passed, his mother said it was still in his blood. "He started out when he was 18, and he never really got out of it."

Wayne Trout Memorial Service Planned 6-14-05
A memorial service will be held for Wayne on Saturday, June 25th at Mead Garden located at 1300 S. Denning Dr, Winter Park between the hours of 11 AM and 1 PM.

A Celebration Of Wayne Trout's Life 6-20-05
Following the Memorial Service Saturday, June 25th at Mead Garden there will also be a celebration of Wayne Trout's life to be held at the clubhouse at Park West Condominiums located at 300 Carolina Ave., Winter Park, Fl. Parking will be at the public parking area on New York Ave. or at the bank parking lot across from Park West - If you should have any questions, please contact Cathy Marino at 407-628-0110.

A Remembrance By An Army Acquaintance 7-31-18
My name is Armistead Neely and just a few minutes ago I was doing some work and cam across the name Trout (in another context). This jarred my brain to remember the chance encounter with the radio personality, Wayne Trout, and wonder what happened to the dejected guy I met on that ill-fated bus headed to U.S. Amy basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana in June of 1970. I stopped what I was doing and searched the internet only to find out that Wayne Trout passed away in 2005 after a long career on the radio air-waves in central Florida. I now feel compelled to tell a little story about meeting Wayne to someone (or anyone) who knew him as a tip of the cap to Wayne and a gesture of "adios" to him, my brief Army buddy. So here it is and then I will return from this trip down cob-webbed memory lanes to my own world:
Wayne was sitting across the aisle from me on the crowded bus heading to Ft. Polk Louisiana. (For those of you not familiar with Ft. Polk, it is a place renown for its steamy humidity, steroid enhance palmetto bugs, and blazing sun in the summer and at the time scores of World War II vintage wooden un-air conditioned buildings plotted down in rows to house the happy U.S. Army raw recruits. This place, according to the U.S. Army, is an ideal place to train (i.e. badger, cajole, run, torment, & curse) recruits to prepare for their inevitable trip to the even more uncomfortable confines of Vietnam. Now I am no Einstein, but is was plainly evident that this bus was loaded with humans of relatively limited mental acumen. And, if my life was to be dependent on this lot to "have my back" in combat I was in huge trouble. I needed someone to watch my "six" while I watched his, even at this early hour of Army training. So I tugged at the sleeve of Wayne Trout and began a conversation. Mostly, the conversation centered around the consensus that we were in peril and that both our fellow recruits and future Vietnam foes were potential obstacles to our future existence. I must say that I was consoled by Wayne's wit and gift of gab. The process of indoctrination into the U.S. Army, as anyone can tell you, is one of planned chaos. The more confused, disoriented and out of control the Army can make a raw recruit feel, the more they like it. (Imagine a yard full of chickens running in all directions trying to avoid the overhead ravenous hawks. The hawks would be the Army drill instructors.) So, Wayne and I "soldiered on" through the initial brutal tongue lashings, crude medical exams, new coiffeurs, dazzling new clothes and boots before being assigned to a platoon. Once assigned to my platoon, I never saw Wayne again. But, I took great satisfaction in knowing that somewhere on this sun-scorched patch of Louisiana swamp land there was another sane, sad, and talented man anxious to return to the trade he loved- the radio. So farewell, soldier! I assume that you dodged the Vietnam experience, as did I, and that you had a full life filled with good times and many good stories. Oh, and by the way Wayne, thanks for watching my "six" for awhile. Hand Salute!

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