Simpson ‘If I Did It’ splash canceled

MIAMI – Media baron Rupert Murdoch, facing a civil war within his television empire and a furious barrage of criticism from outside, pulled the plug Monday on a book and TV special in which O.J. Simpson would have confessed – maybe, sort of – to the murder of his ex-wife and one of her friends.

“This was an ill-considered project,” said Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. “We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families.”

His words spelled doom for “If I Did It,” a book/TV package announced with great fanfare only last week by ReganBooks and Fox Broadcasting, both part of the sprawling News Corp. media conglomerate.

In it, Simpson was supposed to discuss hypothetically how he would have committed the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. Fox, in its announcement of the project, called it “an interview that no one thought would ever happen.”

The public reacted with some enthusiasm – pre-orders pushed the book onto the Amazon.com top 20 best-sellers list – but commentators from CBS’ homespun Bob Schieffer to Murdoch’s own Fox News Channel firebrand Bill O’Reilly raged nonstop against the interview. Media critic Howard Kurtz opened a discussion of “If I Did It” on his CNN show Sunday with the question: “Is this just pathetic, or just utterly sickening?”

More significantly, broadcasting insiders said Monday, Fox television affiliates began balking almost immediately. Despite a network campaign to bring them into line, including sending affiliates a list of talking points supporting the show, by Monday 13 stations had announced they would refuse to run “If I Did It.”

“I wasn’t surprised they canceled it,” an official at another network said Monday. “Once affiliates start canceling, it’s like unraveling a thread. It just keeps going.”

The cancellation of the project was announced with a terse two-sentence statement from Murdoch and no elaboration from either Fox Broadcasting or ReganBooks – certainly not with respect to the murky financial details behind the deal or how they’ll be affected by the cancellation.

For Fox, whose fall television season has been just short of disastrous, pulling the plug on the special wiped out a potentially large audience that would have buoyed the network’s advertising rates.