MUMBAI: As a result of pressure from different quarters US media conglomerate News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has announced that the company has cancelled publication of the book If I Did It as well as the special which was to air on Fox.

This was to have featured O.J. Simpson. In 1995 Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his wife and another man in 1995. The cancelled project was to have had him talk about how he would have done the murders.

Murdoch said, “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson.”

Besides the victims' families opposition came from viewers, station affiliates, advertisers, booksellers and even executives within the company. Reports state that over a dozen of Fox's roughly 200 affiliates across the US had rejected the show and News Corp had received indications that more were likely to follow.

Simpson was acquitted of murder charges in 1995, but a civil court found him liable for their deaths in 1997 and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.