A number of affiliates of the Fox TV network have refused to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which he talks hypothetically of how he would have killed his ex-wife and her companion.

The decision by some broadcasters not to screen the two-part special, follows public anger about the forthcoming release of Simpson’s book If I Did It, in which the former American football star outlines how he would have murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, were he the one responsible for the killings.

Simpson was accused of stabbing his ex-wife and Mr Goldman to death in June 1994 but was controversially acquitted the following year after a lengthy televised trial that transfixed the nation.

He was later found liable in a civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages to the victims’ families. The family say that they have yet to receive a cent. Simpson has always denied responsibility for the murders.

The television interview, is to be shown to be shown on November 27 and 29 on Fox TV, and comes ahead of the book’s release on November 30.

It is conducted by Judith Regan, of ReganBooks, the publisher of the extraordinary hypothetical memoir. ReganBooks is a subsidiary of HarperCollins, which, like Fox TV, is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times and Times Online.

Lin Broadcasting and Pappas Broadcasting, which own a total of nine Fox affiliates, announced they would not air the broadcast after much consideration into the matter.

"After careful consideration regarding the nature of the show, as well as the feedback we received from the viewers of northeast Wisconsin, we determined that this programming was not serving the local public interest," wrote Jay Zollar, general manager of WLUK-TV in Green Bay.

WLUK-TV is owned by Lin Broadcasting, which also has stations in Alabama, Ohio, New Mexico and Rhode Island.

Pappas Broadcasting, which owns Fox stations in Nebraska, California; and South Dakota, said it was uninterested in helping Simpson profit from the project. A spokesman for Fox said that the network had no comment about the decision.

Defending her decision to publish, Ms Regan said in a statement on Friday that she had accepted the book when Simpson approached her with it because she regarded it as his confession and she saw it as a way of demonstrating that the US legal system was flawed. She had also been told that the profits from it would be given to Simpson’s children, she said.

Lawyers for Ron Goldman’s father have said that they will attempt to seize any money Simpson receives for the book. One report said that Mr Simpson had received a $3.5 million (£2 million) advance for it. Fox TV has not disclosed the size of his payment for the interview.

The interview and the book are set to reignite the debate over whether Mr Simpson escaped justice when he was acquitted of the two murders.

The National Enquirer, which broke the story about the book last month, cited a source familiar with the project describing the account as "so detailed and chillingly realistic — with O. J. as the central figure — that it leaves no doubt it is a confession of what really happened".

Fox has released few details of the interview but its website carries a video clip in which the interviewer says: "You wrote, ‘I have never seen so much blood in my life’".

Mr Simpson responds: "I don’t think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood."

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