The TV Column: Chris Brown’s latest move: spin control over ‘GMA’ outburst

(Peter Kramer/AP) - From left, BET hosts Terence Jackson and Rocsi talk with singer Chris Brown on BET's 106 & Park show in New York, on Monday, March 21, 2011. Brown returned to the show on Wednesday to apologize for the \"Good Morning America\" incident.

Chris Brown and ABC News’s “Good Morning America” ratcheted up the spin control after the rapper’s Tuesday-morning clash morphed into a major media story.

Brown went on BET’s “106 & Park” program Wednesday night to say that he got ambushed by “Good Morning America.” He also said that he was taking the high road and that, to that end, his fans — Team Breezy — should stop the threats made to “GMA” host Robin Roberts.

“GMA,” meanwhile, said that it accepted Brown’s apology and that, no, the show did not ambush him when Roberts asked him a question about his 2009 guilty plea for beating then-girlfriend Rihanna.

One day after throwing a temper tantrum in his dressing room at “GMA’s” Times Square headquarters, Brown went on “106 & Park” to promote his new album and to make an apology of sorts for his outburst — or, as Brown likes to call it, letting off steam.

In case you’ve been hiding under your bed this week — and who could blame you? — Brown had gone on the ABC News morning infotainment show Tuesday to plug his new album and not to take any questions about having pleaded guilty in his Rihanna abuse case.

Except Roberts, while interviewing Brown, brought up the subject, by way of noting that the restraining order against him has recently been relaxed.

But Brown got mad — though not mad enough to forget to sing a number from his new album.

After that bit of business was concluded, he hightailed it to his dressing room and took off his shirt. A window in his dressing room ran into a rogue cooler that was lurking in the room. Brown, not wanting to hang around in a room where windows were slamming into dangerous coolers, exited the building, leaving behind his shirt to fend for itself.

And the Twitter heavens opened up.

“First of all, are you okay?” “106 & Park” host Rocsi — a.k.a. Raquel Roxanne Diaz — asked Brown solicitously at the start of the interview.

Fortunately, the cooler had not attacked Brown.

“I’m great. . . . After the incident, you saw me out with my people just trying to enjoy life and enjoy this experience of having my album out,” Brown said breezily.

“I want to apologize to anybody who was startled in the [‘GMA’] office, anybody who was offended or . . . looked disappointed at my actions. Because I was disappointed in the way I acted,” Brown said.

“We appreciate he apologized to the staff, because they were shaken by his violent outburst,” Roberts said the next morning on “GMA.”

Back to Brown on BET:

The problem had been a failure to communicate, Brown explained.

“When I do shows or when I do interviews, we always send out . . . a talking points sheet,” Brown explained to the BET audience. “And if the network or whoever isn’t complying with what we want to do — so we can equally accomplish a goal — we usually kind of back out and wait until it’s a better situation.”

At his “GMA” appearance, he said, “we were supposed to perform. The talking points were positive and creative, and everything that was sent to me was about the album.”

Instead, he explained, he got “thrown off” and felt sucker punched when Roberts asked about whether he’d recently seen Rihanna.

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