Rumors have been floating around Houston and beyond concerning KTRK 13 Undercover’s Wayne Dolcefino. Did they leave him or did he leave them? I heard it all. Naturally anything involving Wayne-O will be larger than life, so these rumors have travelled around at the speed of light.

That’s why I’m so glad I tuned into Live at 5 tonight to get my daily Melanie Lawson and Art Rascon fix. Turns out an announcement about the missing Dolcefino was made. The station reported that Wayne “elected to leave.”

While we will probably never know the full reason for the Dolcefino/channel 13 breakup, the general consensus is that he and the higher ups butted heads over his stories. Let’s face it, Dolcefino has an aggressive, provocative, hard hitting and sometimes comical style that just doesn’t exist much on TV anymore. More often than not in television news these days, the story’s promo is more interesting than the actual content.

Love him or hate him, Houston TV sweeps months will seem smaller from now on. Dolcefino wasn’t afraid to take on political figures, the police, the schools…pretty much anyone with any authority. Who else besides Dolcefino is willing to actually get put in handcuffs in the course of reporting a story?

This has all come to an end right when Wayne and crew cleaned up at the 2012 10th Annual Lone Star EMMY Awards.

So what happens from here? Obviously we don’t know the terms of the split, but there could be a non-compete clause for Mr. Dolcefino so he might not be able to appear on Houston TV for a period of time. My guess is that another Houston TV station will hire him. In fact, one of his old bosses is in charge at a station practically down the street from abc13 so you never know what can happen. If anyone should hire him at this point in my opinion, my vote is for KHOU 11.

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