BY GABRIELLE BIRKNER
November 21, 2006
Responding to a wave of criticism, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation yesterday said it would not publish "If I Did It," O.J. Simpson's hypothetical account of how he would have murdered his ex-wife and her friend.
News Corporation, the media giant whose properties include Fox Broadcasting, the Fox News Channel, and the New York Post, also canceled a pre-publication television interview with the former football star who was accused and acquitted of the 1994 slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Mr. Murdoch called the project "ill-considered," and apologized to the families of Ms. Brown Simpson and Mr. Goldman.
The announcement came less than a week after ReganBooks, an imprint of News Corporation's HarperCollins, announced Mr. Simpson's book would hit stores November 30, and that Fox would air a two-hour prime-time interview with Mr. Simpson during the November "sweeps" period. The television special, hosted by ReganBooks's chief Judith Regan, had already been recorded.
Mr. Simpson, who pleaded not guilty to the murders in what has been dubbed "Trial of the Century," was reportedly paid $3.5 million.
A News Corporation spokesman, Andrew Butcher, told The New York Sun that Mr. Murdoch, together with the corporation's senior management, decided to spike the book and television special yesterday. "We listened to what the public was saying, and we moved to cancel it," he said. "The simple fact is that this was a mistake."
Copies of the book that had already been printed would be destroyed, Mr. Butcher said.
Before yesterday's announcement, "If I Did It" was one of the top 20 titles ordered on Amazon.com.
Reached by phone, a ReganBooks spokeswoman, Suzanne Wickham, said the imprint had "no further statement" beyond the News Corporation release.
Despite the interest in Mr. Simpson's book, contractual agreements will likely prevent the author from selling the book to another publisher, according to a New York-based entertainment lawyer, Quinn Heraty. Though unfamiliar with the specifics of this case, Ms. Heraty said that publishers generally own the manuscript for at least 35 years.
Of yesterday's announcement, Ms. Heraty said: "This sounds like a business decision for them. Big companies don't make moral decisions. I doubt they'd pull a book they'd been touting so highly unless some major advertisers told them they'd pull their advertising."
The now-reversed choice to publish Mr. Simpson's book, and promote it with a two-part television special, caused internal rifts at News Corporation. On his popular Fox News Channel talk show, "The O'Reilly Factor," Bill O'Reilly threatened to boycott the book and the advertising sponsors of the television special.
"Here's a man many believe did kill these two Americans - Nicole Brown Simpson being the mother of his two children - yet Simpson is participating in a project that is exploiting the murders," Mr. O'Reilly said on his show. "Shamefully, the Fox Broadcasting unit is set to carry the program, which is simply indefensible, and a low point in American culture."
Another Fox News Channel talkshow host, Geraldo Rivera, chided Ms. Regan for her role in publishing and promoting "If I Did It." The format of the television special allowed Mr. Simpson "to have his cake and eat it too," Mr. Rivera, the host of "Geraldo At Large," told Court TV on November 17. "For them to pose it as this pretense is so hypocritical it makes it absolutely nonsense, and I tell you, I say the odds are no better than 50-50 that this thing ever sees the light of day," he said of the television broadcast.
Yet Mr. Rivera predicted that the book would "hit the market" despite the controversy surrounding it.
Prior to yesterday's announcement, several Fox affiliate stations said they would not broadcast the interview with Mr. Simpson, which was scheduled to run during the "sweeps" period, when Nielsen Media Research attempts to quantify the number of viewers tuned into a particular station. Audience size is a factor that helps determine advertising rates.
In lieu of the special, Fox will air episodes of the dramas "House" and "Bones" on November 27 and November 29, respectively, according to a schedule posted on its Web site.
Pappas Telecasting Companies, which owns four Fox affiliate stations, last week informed Fox that it would not be airing the O.J. Simpson special. Pappas executives hailed the special's cancellation as "a victory for the people who spoke out."
A statement by the company read: "This special would have benefited only O.J. Simpson, who deserves nothing but contempt, and certainly no benefit."