Kiro-TV Pulling The Plug On Cody -- This Time, Wayne Will Disappear From TV, Stay On Radio

Ten years ago, KIRO-TV teased viewers to tune in the station's evening news to Watch Wayne Disappear.

The Wayne in question - voluminous sportscaster Wayne Cody - was trying to shuck 100 pounds.

Most of Wayne stayed put.

It took a decade and something more radical than a diet, but it now looks like Cody is finally going, going, gone - at least from the tube.

Cody, who injected a new flamboyance to Seattle TV when he became Channel 7's lead sportscaster in 1978, says he'll disappear in a month from the gaze of the cameras. KIRO is dropping him as sports anchor, but he'll still be heard on news-talk KIRO-AM radio, Cody said yesterday.

"I'll probably stay there another couple, three years, then retire," he said.

Cody said KIRO-TV acting news director Gail Neubert told him the station was dropping him as anchor for the 7:30 and 11 p.m. sportscasts, and from the 10 p.m. newscast that KIRO produces for Channel 22, KTZZ.

KIRO's president and its acting TV news director did not respond to requests for comment on Cody's demotion.

Local television will be thinner for it; a place, probably, with more room for handsome young broadcasters who pretty much look and talk alike - journalists ladled from the same pot of broth.

Cody, faults and all, is chili.

He had a barber shave his beard once on-camera. Brought a horse into the studio, and a high-school band. Read the sports wearing a catcher's mask.

He sometimes got players confused. Got teams confused. Got scores confused. If he even got entire sports confused - mistaking jai alai for cricket, say - it would not come as a shock to the true Codyphile.

"I'm gonna have it 90 percent right, plus it's going to be colorful," Cody said.

His current contract expires March 1. By then, Cody expects to have signed a new radio deal with KIRO.

He will be off Channel 7, perhaps only to return to the CBS affiliate to announce the Seafair hydroplane races and other special events and as a fill-in for sports anchor Steve Raible.

"He's very important to radio," said KIRO Newsradio general manager Joe Abel, who wants Cody to continue his 7-10 p.m. weeknight call-in show, "Sportsline," and his twice-hourly sports reports during afternoon "drive time."

"We want to keep Wayne happy. We think there's a way to do that," Abel said.

The new contract offer will include pinch-hitting duties for Raible, Abel confirmed.

But Cody said he isn't sure "whether I still want to do TV."

Viewers love him. Viewers hate him.

In 1978, he won a Seattle Times poll of readers' favorite local-TV sportscaster; last year, Seattle Weekly readers voted him Worst Radio/TV Personality.

It would be hard to watch or listen to Cody and not feel something extreme.

"Seattle was wonderful to me," Cody said. "They took a radio guy with a beard, weighing three and a quarter, and put me on TV."

While acting news director Neubert told him of the change 10 days ago, Cody believes the ax was sharpened and put in Neubert's hands by news director John Lippman before he left to take a job as news director at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles earlier this month.

"Lippman apparently told someone I was old and fat . . . he wanted me off TV," Cody said. "I think the man is an ass, OK? He's the worst thing to ever run a television station."

Lippman, reached in Los Angeles, denied ever calling Cody too old or portly. He said removing Cody "was a decision in which I participated. But this would not have happened if this was my last shot. . . . This should not be laid at my feet." Lippman would not elaborate on the reasons behind the decision.

Cody was benched from the 5 p.m. sportscast last fall in favor of Raible - a former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver who also anchors Channel 7's noon news. Cody said he learned of that decision by showing up for a publicity photo and finding Raible standing in his place.

Cody wouldn't speculate whether Lippman's permanent replacement as news director, expected to be named by April, might revive his TV career.

Seattle television sans Cody is about as difficult to imagine as Cody without his trademark girth.

The son of a vaudeville performer and an actress, Cody came to Seattle to run a now-defunct talk-radio station. He moved behind a KIRO-radio microphone in 1975 to host the station's evening sports call-in show; after a tryout as a weekend TV sportscaster, he quickly became Channel 7's franchise player. He also called broadcasts for the SuperSonics, Seahawks and the University of Washington Huskies.

He knows how to keep a large profile.

Cody has lent his name to charity events, appeared in countless commercials, opened a comedy club - since closed - and invested in several restaurants, including one in Bellevue called Cody's 8th Street Grill.

When he arrived in Seattle, his resume included stints as a country-music disc jockey and as an announcer for the Indiana Pacers, when they were still in the old American Basketball Association.

He told one reporter upon arriving here that his five-year goal was to be able to stand on the Sonics' court, talking to then-coach Bill Russell, "and have everybody in the stands ask: `Hey, who's that guy with Wayne Cody?' "

Wayne's world is a place of strong opinions - formed quickly and delivered in his familiar staccato rhythms - on practically anything.

Cody said he toned down much of his TV schtick over the past several years by order of Lippman. Cody's last memorable flourish may have been on Halloween, when he appeared in a live "remote" dressed as Henry VIII.

Cody is down to about 250 pounds, by the way. Watch him disappear.