The mob is getting angrier out there.
It’s angry over news that the exonerated (criminal case) and convicted (civil case) O.J. Simpson is slated not only have a book “If I Did It” rolled out to great hype but that Fox stations will carry a two part “interview” hyping it.
And now a good part of this mob includes….owners of Fox stations who don’t want the informercial for O.J.’s book being shoved down their stations’ throats. So some are refusing to air it, the New York Daily News reports:
O.J. Simpson’s televised “confession” is too “disgusting” to air for some Fox affiliates.
Fox affiliates in Green Bay, Wis.; Omaha; Providence, R.I.; Fresno, Calif., and elsewhere have told Fox Broadcasting honchos they won’t broadcast the controversial sit-down with the soiled gridiron great.
“We were deluged with calls and e-mails from outraged viewers who thought it was disgusting that this program was going to be aired,” said Mike Angelos, vice president of corporate communications at Pappas Broadcasting, which owns four Fox affiliates bailing out of the show.
“We feel the program has no beneficial interest other than to O.J. Simpson and we have no desire to benefit O.J. Simpson,” Angelos added.
WRONG.
The program will also benefit Judith Regan, publisher of Regan Books, who — just coincidentally, mind you — will be the fearless, aggressive reporter who will interview Simpson…whose book should bring her lots of money (it’s already selling bigtime on Amazon.com). MORE:
Officials at Tribune Broadcasting, which has six Fox stations, were mulling the decision this weekend, said Richard Graziano, vice president and general manager of WTIC-TV in Hartford. Officials may see a tape of the show before deciding, he said.
“Many of the general managers haven’t expressed a keen interest in running it,” Graziano told the Daily News. “It’s a tough one. I don’t know what Fox is thinking,” he said. “Anyone I’ve talked to seemed a little shocked by this.”
Lin Broadcasting, which has five Fox affiliates, has backed out of the show as well. “We don’t feel it’s appropriate for northeast Wisconsin,” said Jay Zollar, general manager of Lin-owned WLUK-TV in Green Bay. “We’ve gotten a significant amount of community … [and] advertiser reaction.”
Viewer backlash is also coming with unsolicited negative advertiser reaction in some markets.
For instance, in Green Bay, Zollar said he’s got a list of nearly 30 advertisers who have called saying they want no part of Simpson’s show. Some clients, Zollar said, don’t even want to be on the air in the same week for fear of being tainted by Simpson blow-back.
So does this mean it won’t get an audience? Hardly. Even this Daily News piece notes that people still want to see it.
The reason: in 21st Century America notoriety=attracting an audience=advertisers’ dream=big bucks. Unless the show is a ratings bust, it’ll set a new sub-standard for publishing and broadcasting in the United States — and probably some publisher and (probably Fox) broadcast executives will fall all overthemslves stooping to match or southwardly suprass it. Literally anything is now fair game to make a buck.
TV Watch wonders what kinds of advertisers would be willing to associate their names with The O.J. Simpson Show:
What advertisers will be affixing their names to this illustrious event, produced by Fox’s reality maven, Mike Darnell?
Well, let’s rule out some such as:
–Ginsu Knives
–Hertz Rent A Car (OJ used to be its spokesman but you can just see comedians saying the new slogan should be “Love Hertz.”)
–Oscar Meyer cold cuts
–Forest Law Cemetery
TV Watch sees Simpson as having a bigger long-range plan:
Perhaps this is indeed a test to see whether Simpson can make his big return. Yes, I said return. Since the day he was cleared, Simpson has said that he would get back all that he had lost–his career as a sportscaster, his career doing major sponsorship endorsements.
He said he would get all that back, “in spades.”
Simpson must feel he is close to drawing that flush. A true test will be what advertisers come on to support this show with his name attached.
Financially, the good news for Fox is that this supposedly isn’t costing the network much money to produce. Maybe Fox will only need to sell this to a few advertisers or a single sponsor.
Then the press will have a story to tell, with the headline: “Simpson’s TV Sponsors: If they buy it, here’s how it happened and what it cost them.”
Howard Burns, writing in The Hollywood Reporter:
Regan told the Associated Press that the idea for the book came from Simpson and that she considers this “his confession.” If this were indeed a confession, it might bring some small solace to the families. But this is no confession. There’s nothing hypothetical about a confession unless the intent is to taunt. “If I Did It” — the title alone accomplishes that.
Anyone can write a book about anything if someone’s willing to publish it. The airwaves, however, are still public and beholden to a certain standard of decency. Which brings us back to the Brown and Goldman families. Can there really be no one in authority at Fox who finds this two-night exercise in amateur forensics and crass commercialism so tasteless that it shouldn’t be aired? No one?
Yes: it’s coming from the individual Fox stations. But at Big Corporation Fox — run by Rupert Murdoch — the bottom line is all that matters. And did you guess? Conservative Fox talk show host Sean Hannity (who has coincidentally had books published by Regan) was defending Regan books on his show recently (Hannity is a fine company man).
England’s The Guardian sees something significant happening here:
For in reality OJ Simpson has succeeded where millions of angry liberals have always failed: striking a direct blow at the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, and especially its controversial broadcasting arm, headed by Fox television.
A wave of revulsion and open criticism, reaching a climax this weekend, has swept America in the wake of revelations that Simpson intends to capitalise on the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman with a book and TV ‘confession’ in a £1.8 million deal brokered by Murdoch-owned companies. So widespread is the condemnation that even some of the top names on Murdoch’s own cable channel, Fox News, have urged viewers not to buy the book or watch the interview….
….The Fox channel has long been a liberal bete noire and the subject of numerous documentaries about its obvious conservative bias. But the Simpson scandal is different, with the sheer involvement of Murdoch’s empire striking at the heart of middle America. It was controlled from the start by disparate elements of Murdoch’s News Corp empire: ReganBooks is owned by Murdoch’s HarperCollins. The interview is to be shown on two separate shows on Murdoch’s Fox network, just in time for a vital ratings boost that will set lucrative future advertising rates. And news of the deal was first revealed in the Murdoch-owned New York Post last week.
All coincidences, to be sure.
Writes ABC News’ Jim Avila:
Outrage is at high alert over a book few have read, a book that promises new details about the Brentwood murders of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman — from a man the book’s press release said “knows the facts better than anyone.”
Advance orders put it at No. 29 on Amazon.com….
….Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne seemed to speak for many when he told ABC News, “I don’t think it should be shown. I think people should boycott it, but they won’t.
“I would love to say, ‘I’m not going to look at it.’ But I know I will look at it.
“He’s got everybody talking about him again,” Dunne went on to say, in an interview that airs on “20/20” Friday night. “Everybody. Wherever you go.”
Dunne said he “went to get some milk this morning at the country store here,” in rural Connecticut, “and … they’re talking about it in there.”
SUBTEXT: Notoriety and hype WORK in America.
Avila then gives the best quote on this controversy:
Former Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mark Fuhrman, himself once the target of widespread scorn after he was recorded making racially disparaging comments, told ABC News he believes the Simpson book project is a sad benchmark on the nation’s long decline into news as pure infotainment.
“Really, what have we become as a nation?” he asked in an interview with ABC News. “We have somebody we know commits a double murder, slashes two people, stabs them to death … the mother of his children! He’s writing about ‘Well, if I did it, this is how I’d kill your mother.’ This is entertainment?
“Is this the lowest form of reality TV? Yes,” said Fuhrman, who said he is a paid consultant for Fox. “What kind of people would do this? I have no idea, but I have no respect for anybody who would engage this man in anything but a knife fight.”
Maureen Ryan, The Watcher, on The Chicago Tribune’s weblog:
This move tarnishes not only the network, giving people the impression that Fox has gone back to peddling full-on sleaze, but it tarnishes all of television. I’d bet the producers of “House� and “24� are currently taking anti-nausea medication at the thought that they have to share a network with this kind of tabloid trash.
Fox executives need to take a good hard look at their network and decide what they want it to be known for. Frankly, aside from “House� and “24,� there’s not much worth watching on Fox.
Of course “Idol� will continue to fill the coffers for years to come, but executives at the network seem to have given up on trying to come up with quality scripted fare to fill up the space between “Idol� seasons. This season’s new Fox shows were particularly weak, and many of the networks new programs are already gone.
It’s going to take Fox a very long time to live down the stigma of this heinous O.J. program. Perhaps an effort to come up with a slate of quality programs will help. A little.
The bottom line is, Fox needs this program like it needs a hole in the head. Does it want to be known for popular, quality programs or does it want to be known as the purveyor of exploitative fare?
Meanwhile, the satire site The Spoof offers alternative titles for O.J.’s book:
-I Did It
-Did I Do It?
-What If I Did It?
-So What If I Did It?
-I Did It Like I Did It
-Didn’t I Do It?
-So What If I Didn’t Do It?
-Murdering for Dummies
-Murdering for Total Dummies
-Murdering for Total F—ing Dummies
-Murdering for Fun and Profit
-How to Murder Your Wife in Five East Steps
-My Lawyer Told Me to Leave That Glove
-How to Profit from Murder
-How to Murder for Profit
-Laughing All the Way to the Bank
-I Killed the Bitch
-How to Kill a Bitch
-How Fox Arranged Everything
-Fox Did It
-Murdoch Did It
-Getting the Payoff
-Ka-Ching!
TMV NOTE TO THE SPOOF: Don’t give them any ideas. Regan and Fox may want a sequel after the raking in the money from synergistic hype that reeled in Americans who seek quick curiosity fixed and don’t care about the issues behind this controversy, the two dead people and the apparent way payment is being made so that the family of the murdered Ron Goldman doesn’t get a single of the reported $3 million that Simpson will allegedly indirectly receive despite their victory in a civil suit against Simpson.
Actually, Regan and Fox are probably working on follow-up titles like these already.
If it smells, it sells.
FOOTNOTE: A reader has requested we post contact information so she and others can make their feelings know. We are posting this info that’s on the Goldman Family’s new www.dontpayoj.com website (where you can sign a petition):
FOX Contact information:
Call FOX TV (Central number): (310) 369-1000
FOX Affiliate in LA (KTTV Channel 11):
(310) 584-2000 or (310) 584-2005
Email FOX: [email protected]
Write to FOX Broadcasting:
FOX Broadcasting Co.
P.O. Box 900
Beverly Hills, CA 90213
HarperCollins Contact information:
Email the CEO of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman: [email protected]
Call HarperCollins: (212) 207- 7000
Regan Books Contact information:
Email the managing editor at Regan Books, Cassie Jones: [email protected]
Call Cassie Jones at Regan Books: (310) 228-6250
UPDATE: The Daily News now reports that the O.J. book and interview are increasingly causing a rebellion within Fox News as well:
Fox News firebrand Bill O’Reilly threatened yesterday to whack Rupert Murdoch in the wallet for promoting O.J. Simpson’s how-I-murdered-my-wife book.
Vowing to boycott any company that advertises on Fox’s two-part special hyping O.J.’s “If I Did It,” O’Reilly declared: “If every American walked away from the O.J. garbage, it wouldn’t happen.”
“I’m not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book,” he added. “If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells – ever.”
Geraldo Rivera, another Fox News star, piled on and called the book “appalling.”
“I will bash this project every minute I have the opportunity to bash this project,” Rivera said.
Rivera is now more of a fizzled out Fox News star, but O’Reilly is still a ratings powerhouse on TV as well as on the radio. And how is Murdoch dealing with all of this?
Faced with a fusillade of fury from even house conservatives like O’Reilly, the media titan cut and run from the controversy yesterday.
“I can’t reach him today,” Murdoch’s spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said. “I would have no comment for him.”
A HarperCollins insider called that fair-and-balanced baloney and pointed out that Murdoch should have known what kind of gory garbage Regan was trying to foist on the public.
“I know that HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman had to sign off on the O.J. book and I would think that she would have had to run it by Rupert, considering what a [bleep] storm it would create,” the insider said. “Rupert’s bottom line is making money.”
But is all of this BY DESIGN?
Bob Thompson, a Syracuse University professor and pop culture expert, said he’s not sure whether this whole controversy wasn’t ginned up to produce ratings for Fox.
“My theory has always been that Fox News and Fox Broadcasting are the perfect synergy,” he said. “One produces this outrageous programming that pundits on the other channel can complain about.”
Bottom line: so far it doesn’t look like the bottom line will be bad for O.J. He gets his paycheck apparently made out to a third party no matter what. The book will make a profit and the show will likely get far better ratings than if this controversy had not occurred.
UPDATE II: Don Surber:”O.J. got away with murder. Twice. I hope the TV show tanks in the ratings and the publisher has has to pay extra to have the books hauled to a landfill.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.