News Corp, the bosses of the bosses of the people who put together the whole OJ Simpson “what if I really did commit the murders that everybody on earth knows I committed anyway” hypothetical experiment, have canceled both the book and the special. From AP:

After a firestorm of criticism, News. Corp. said Monday that it has canceled the O.J. Simpson book and television special “If I Did It.”
“I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,” said Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman. “We are sorry for any pain that his has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.”

A dozen Fox affiliates had already said they would not air the two-part sweeps month special, planned for next week before the Nov. 30 publication of the book by ReganBooks. The publishing house is a HarperCollins imprint owned — like the Fox network — by News Corp.

So it sounds like it was really more of a “we stand to lose tons of money in lost advertising revenue” sort of thing, than any real act of conscious. I wonder if they would have felt this way if everybody had been all excited about the book/crappy pseudo-journalistic interview. Would their concern for the victims families feelings have been so acute? One can only speculate. I will, however, put this forward. From the same article:

Sales [of the book] had been strong, but not sensational. “If I Did It” cracked the top 20 of Amazon.com last weekend, but by Monday afternoon, at the time its cancellation had been announced, the book had fallen to No. 51.

Nice.