• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 21, 2006

In light of yesterday's announcement from News Corp concerning cancellation of O.J. Simpson's TV interview and book--get ready for O.J. Simpson's new book and his TV interview to come out.

You heard right.

Of course, these won't be official versions. But the betting is that there'll be a black market book, and a black market TV interview on the Internet somewhere. (Did someone say YouTube?). The book has been written, published and produced. It's just not on retailers' book shelves. Additionally, the TV interview is already in the can.

Piracy is still rampant on the Internet and in other places (though since being acquired by Google and becoming a good Internet citizen, YouTube is looking to go straight with big media companies.)

Overall, analysts speculate that News Corp.'s decision--which comes less than a week after its Fox network unit released the news of a November sweeps TV interview and a book debut--won't mean the end of Simpson or the story.

ReganBooks has asked book retailers to ship back boxes of the Simpson book unopened. But the likelihood of a least one book slipping out through the illegal part of Internet ether is very possible.

And then TV news magazines are likely to pick it all up. Subsequent lawsuits, perhaps against Simpson and other parties, will come to the fore. There'll be other stories to be unearthed--like that mysterious Simpson intermediary paid a fee by Judith Regan, publisher of ReganBooks and the Simpson book. Sources say Simpson already got a $3.5 million advance on that book--which is another tale to tell.

What of Judith Regan, now that Rupert Murdoch himself has pulled the rug out from under her? Probably not much. Not from the publisher who has made an art of publishing highly profitable tomes from highly public controversial figures--Jenna Jameson, Michael Moore, Jose Canseco and James McGreevey.

The Simpson story doesn't die because too much media is already in motion--and those wildly interested aficionados of everything Simpson have had their taste buds enticed once again.