Deejay suspended for call to player's widow

The KUPD-AM disc jockey who called Darryl Kile's widow and asked her if she had a date for Thursday's Diamondbacks-Cardinals game has been suspended in an incident that has created a national buzz and caused one of the station's major advertisers to pull out.

After Beau Duran serves his one-week suspension, his status will be reviewed, according to Chuck Artigue, the media manager for the Sandusky Group, which owns the station.

The station and Duran have apologized to Flynn Kile, both teams and Major League Baseball.

"I evaluated late yesterday afternoon and on through the night," Artigue said. "Beau is on suspension. He's off the air.

"We will talk again a week from today to find out if he, in fact, has had a chance to reflect on what he did and his error in judgment."

The incident has led to an uproar in the Valley and St. Louis, where irate citizens have flooded the Cardinals' online message board. One posting ridiculed the apology that KUPD had on its Web site, which said in part that "this was not intended to be a ratings stunt nor was it premeditated. We are truly amazed on how this turned into a media circus."

Members of the Cardinals and Diamondbacks organizations have expressed their disgust. Newspapers around the country have reported on the story, and there was even an item in the Bangkok Post in Thailand.

The station also suffered a financial hit. The Shane Co. has ceased advertising with KUPD and on its Web site, according to Chief Executive Officer Chris Riggs. In an e-mail, Riggs said Shane has demanded Duran apologize to Flynn Kile and the people of St. Louis via that city's KMOX radio and have requested that Duran take out a full-page ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to further apologize.

"We hope that the actions we have taken will show our distaste for this type of inappropriate behavior," Riggs said in an e-mail.

Artigue said everyone associated with the show regrets what happened and wishes they could turn back the clock.

"The good news is that the two ball teams, management and players we have been able to talk to and probably more importantly I am told, Mrs. Kile, have accepted our apology," he said. "Hopefully this stays behind us, and we can move forward."

Walt Jocketty, the Cardinals general manager, said Duran's actions were "tasteless, classless."

"There are certain things people do to hype their rating, but something like this is totally uncalled for. . . . It's hard to believe they have stooped so low," Jocketty said.

Diamondbacks first baseman Mark Grace said the team issued an apology to the Cardinals through Andy Benes, a Cardinals pitcher and former Diamondback. Grace said that he and his wife had dinner with Flynn Kile the night before the incident.

"She's slowly but surely getting better and learning how to handle things, and for that to happen, having known Darryl and Flynn like a lot of us do, it really bothered us a lot," Grace said.

"Even if you don't know them, it's not funny. It's beyond classless. We want every single person associated with the St. Louis Cardinals (to know) that we don't want that to be a reflection on the Diamondbacks (and) the city of Phoenix, and hopefully the guys who did it are looking for work today."

On Friday's O'Reilly Factor on Fox Sports News, Barry Axelrod, the attorney for the Kile family, said that Flynn Kile was not planning to pursue the issue and wanted the radio station to take some action. He also said that she has received a flood of phone calls from supporters around the country.

Today's Arizona Republic reported that they have received 25 letters on this subject from across the country. Here's a sample...

Disc jockey's 'prank' appalling

Oct. 5, 2002

I am incredibly appalled by the callous and disrespectful actions of KUPD-FM disc jockey Beau Duran.

Duran called Darryl Kile's widow, Flynn, in her hotel room in Phoenix and played a mean-spirited, childish prank while on the air for the entertainment of his audience and completely at her expense.

KUPD's market manager Chuck Artigue says no action will be taken against the DJ, and I'm equally appalled by that. There can be no possible excuse for what Duran did to Flynn Kile, and if KUPD and the Sandusky Group do not see fit to condemn it with disciplinary action, then it must be assumed that they condone it.

I'm a lifelong Cardinals fan. I bleed Cardinal red. But last year, when the Diamondbacks knocked the Cardinals out of the playoffs, most of us rooted for them all the way through the World Series.

I don't know if Arizona fans would do the same, but I have to believe they are as shocked by this behavior as the rest of us. Is this how the people of Phoenix want to be represented on a national stage?

I have to believe the answer is no. -John Hempe
Rapid City, S.D.

And elsewhere in the Arizona Republic, there was this opinion column...

Moron deejay's boss should know better

By Laurie Roberts
Republic columnist
Oct. 5, 2002

There seem to be a few people a mite irritated at one of our morning radio rock jocks. I can't imagine why.

People are outraged, people are appalled, people are calling for his job and his head, such as it is.

They seem to think that he not only embarrassed himself but also all of Arizona when he dialed up the widow of St. Louis pitcher Darryl Kile for a little on-air entertainment and asked her if she had a date for Thursday's game.

Classy fellow.

But, really, what do you expect from a guy named Beau, an overinflated, overindulged and clearly overrated jerk who lists among his likes on the radio station's Web site as "easy women, alcohol, (something no decent newspaper would print) and pornography"?

It's not his behavior that so shocks. He's just one more in an army of anonymous on-air idiots who will do anything to grab a rating point. Which, from what I can tell, he desperately needs.

No, it's not Beau whose behavior stuns me. It's the people who employ Beau and boys like him. The bosses, who have apparently decided that there is no line anymore in radio and no shame either.

How is it that they escape any responsibility?

These are the guys, after all, who initially decreed that while Beau Duran's stunt on KUPD was "in terribly bad taste," he wouldn't face any disciplinary action. Chuck Artigue, market manager for the Sandusky Group, which owns the station and five others in town, told reporter Jim Gintonio on Thursday that the call to Flynn Kile during the aptly named Morning Sickness show was just "guys being guys."

Actually, it was guys being jerks. It was guys being morons.

And, worse, it was guys being cruel.

Here the woman is in Phoenix, joining the Cardinals for the first time since her 33-year-old husband's sudden death three months ago, to support the team in its playoff bid. That's got to be painful in ways I can't even imagine. To see where your husband should be standing. To know that his life is over and that yours will never be the same. To feel all of that and to come anyway.

And what does she get? Beau Duran.

Clearly, life ain't fair.

I tried to reach Duran on Friday to ask him what (or whether) he was thinking and maybe to give him a few pointers on a few other victims he can harass during his morning gab fest.

Handy as he is with a phone, you'd think he'd be easy to reach. But he wasn't. Unlike Flynn Kile, I guess he's fortunate enough to have someone screening out annoying phone calls.

By midday Friday, after the story had gone nationwide and at least one advertiser had gone ballistic, KUPD posted an apology on its Web site, saying it was "truly amazed on how this turned into a media circus." Then Artigue announced Friday afternoon that Duran had been suspended for a week.

"He is off the air," he told Gintonio. "We will talk again a week from today to find out if he in fact has had a chance to reflect on what he did and his error in judgment."

Artigue didn't return my call to reflect on the station's error in judgment. Somebody hired this 22-year-old moron as an "on-air talent." Somebody decided that it would be great for Phoenix to wake up in the morning with a guy who lists his hobbies as "imbibing, finding easy women . . . and porn (both enjoying and producing)."

Somebody at KUPD and at plenty of other stations in plenty of other cities set a bar that is so low anymore that you have to dig for it.

And yet time and again those people escape unscathed while all the world calls for Beau on a platter.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or at (602) 444-8635.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.