MEDIA / KEVIN BRASS : Them Fighting Words Leave Rod Stewart Office Fuming

The courtroom scene: On one side is bawdy Rod Stewart, the spiked-hair terror of the British rock ‘n’ roll scene for 20 years, the man who asked the musical question, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

Across the aisle sits Neil Morgan, gray-haired editor of the Tribune, accompanied by his faithful assistant Alison DaRosa and a bevy of attorneys. . .

Well, this courtroom drama almost certainly is not going to happen. But the promoter of Stewart’s San Diego show and his management were incensed with the Tribune editor after he offered a previously unheard explanation for Stewart canceling his concert scheduled for last Saturday night. They didn’t get to the point of threatening legal action, but they’ve demanded a retraction.

The official explanation given for the cancellation was Stewart’s persistent voice problems. “Nope,” Morgan wrote in his Monday column. “Stewart and a musician from another group had a row backstage. Stewart, punched in the face, wouldn’t go on.”

Promoter Bill Silva and Stewart’s management angrily deny the allegation. Stewart was entrenched at the Omni San Diego Hotel, they say, and he never made it to the Sports Arena.

“It’s a total, spurious lie,” said Stewart’s manager, Arnold Stiefel.

There was not even an opening band on the bill, Silva points out, which makes it unlikely that Stewart was in a fight with a musician from another band, unless it was one of the bagpipe players wandering around the arena.

The story might have died on the pages of the Tribune except that KFMB-TV (Channel 8) repeated Morgan’s allegation during its 6:30 p.m. newscast, without bothering to contact Silva or Stewart’s management for the obligatory denial.

The report was a “tag line,” a closing note, to a story on Stewart’s cancellation, 6:30 p.m. producer Rick Brown said, that was compiled from newspaper clippings--not an unusual procedure for many stories handled by TV news departments.

Several reporters contacted Silva about Morgan’s column, including Channel 10, but either chose not to mention it or included Silva’s vehement denial, Silva said. On Tuesday, Channel 8 included his reply in a report during it’s 11 p.m. newscast.

But there has been no official word from Morgan. Saying he didn’t “know much about that one,” Morgan referred calls about Stewart to assistant DaRosa.

She said San Diego police officers were the sources for the story. DaRosa heard reports about a fight at the arena over the police radio while she was on a police ride-along Saturday night with her chum, Mayor Maureen O’Connor (a night immortalized in DaRosa’s Tuesday column). Although the call about a backstage fight was later canceled, she said later that night officers were talking about an incident involving Stewart.

“Officers were talking about it matter-of-factly,” DaRosa said. “I think that’s a good source.”

If her police sources provide her with new information, DaRosa said, she will gladly run an update, “if anybody cares anymore.” According to Lt. Roy Blackledge, no report was filed about a fight, and he was unaware of any official substantiation of the Stewart story.

“I think there has got to be some truth there,” DaRosa said Friday, adding that the fight might have happened at the hotel, not the arena. “At this point, it’s the cops against Rod Stewart’s manager.”

New KPBS-FM (89.5) Program Director Michael Flaster is settling in to his new job, as the station prepares to embark on a research project that could be the first step toward making changes in the public station’s broadcasting schedule.

“I believe public radio is at its best when it is immediate, when it is imaginative, intimate and local,” said Flaster, who comes from WKSU-FM in Kent, Ohio.

Classical music, the current mainstay of KPBS’ programming, doesn’t necessarily seem to fit Flaster’s definition of good public radio.

“The only thing sacred (in programming) is our concern that we are serving our audience well,” he said. . . .

After 33 years as a mainstay of KFMB-AM’s (760) news department, Phil Stewart is retiring at the age of 62. . . .

New Channel 8 anchor Susan Roesgen is eerily reminiscent of Allison Ross, the 11-year veteran of the station she replaced. Roesgen has the same hair, the same cool expression, even some of the same mannerisms. Is it Allison? Has anyone seen the two of them together? Separated at birth? News Director Jim Holtzman said he wasn’t intentionally looking for an Allison clone, but maybe it’s not a coincidence. “Since Allison, I started judging all other anchors by Allison,” Holtzman said. . . .

It’s now official: After a mysterious three-month absence, Operations Manager Jack Merker will not be returning to KSDO-AM (1130). “It was an agreement reached between Jack and myself,” General Manager Mike Shields said, declining to comment further. . . .

Most San Diego movie fans consider this typical: The much-anticipated “Heathers” didn’t make it to San Diego until just a few weeks before it was released on video. This is not so typical: “sex, lies and videotape,” the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, is being given a broader release, which means San Diegans will get to see it at the same time as most of the rest of the country. It will open at the Guild Theater on Friday. For those who can’t wait, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art will have two screenings of “sex, lies and videotape” to benefit the San Diego State Student Film Project at 7 and 9 p.m. Tuesday. San Diego State graduate film student David Creech was able to arrange for the San Diego premier after meeting writer/director Steven Soderbergh at the U. S. Film Festival in Park City, Utah. . . .

As expected, Kevin Stapleford has been promoted to program director of XTRA-FM (91X), replacing Trip Reeb, who left to become general manager of KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. Mike Halloran has been named the station’s music director. . . .

To the disappointment of some local flacks, “Inside San Diego,” KGTV’s (Channel 10) mid-day chat-fest, usually demands that its guests not appear on KFMB-TV’s (Channel 8) early-morning “Sun Up San Diego” within a few months of appearing on “Inside San Diego.” Executive Producer Debbie Lechner says it’s only a “preference,” not a demand. “I see no reason to have people on both shows the same day, the same week or the same month,” Lechner said. “There are plenty of people to do two shows without duplicating.”

“Sun Up” feels no need to make a similar request of guests. “It doesn’t matter to me,” Producer Pat Elwood said.