Fox cancels O.J. Simpson murder porn [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2006.

After the mountains of bad press (including its own Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo), after a dozen Fox affiliates just flat-out refused to run the OJ interview, and after book sales weren't as impressive as expected, NewsCorp cancelled its OJ multimedia murder-porn carnival (first vid is Fox's promo... er, coverage of its own interview from last week and second is my local public access star doing on-the-street interviews with Brooklynites re: OJ, did it or didn't...).

According to the AP:

The industry trade publication Broadcasting & Cable editorialized against the show Monday, saying "Fox should cancel this evil sweeps stunt."

The book was to be published by HarperCollins imprint ReganBooks, the interview aired on Fox, both under the NewsCorp umbrella. Supercalifragilistic publisher Judith Regan sought to publish the book, which she considered OJ's confession, as an homage to abused women everywhere.

In a lengthy preemptive strike, Regan explained her decision, noting that she'd once been fooled by a brilliant, talented, and very nice-looking man: "I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives."

One would think that even the thought of making money from that venture would sicken the heart of an abused woman. One would think that it wouldn't require a Dear Judith Regan letter to do the trick.

One would be wrong.

Tagged as: crime, publishing, harper collins, judith regan, rupert murdoch, fox, oj simpson

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.