I spent the better part of today watching football, but whenever I'd turn the channel past one of the all-news networks I saw coverage of "OJ -- The Sequel." They all seem ready to go to an "All-OJ, All the Time" format.

This probably won't end well, as none of these high-profile court cases ever do. If the Juice is convicted, of anything, it probably won't be something major (it never seems to happen) and if he isn't, we'll be subjected to five more years of "He was framed." And God forbid the LV DA bungles this horribly enough that it makes OJ actually look like he was framed, then we get to live with the "Maybe OJ didn't kill those people" crowd.

Plus, OJ will get another book out of this and more exposure and more fans. For someone who was convicted in a civil court of killing two people -- and for someone who recently wrote a book about how he "would" have done it -- Simpson is surprisingly giddy about continuing to stay in the spotlight. He's like a one-hit wonder who will take any gig thrown to him in order to play that one song, over and over. OJ is the homicidal Christopher Cross.

But back to these 24 infotainment news networks -- I hate them. Someone complained to me today about the size of the Gazette, saying they wanted more pages. I reminded them our job was to cover Beaufort and Northern Beaufort County. We do that well in the space we have. If we had more space, we wouldn't cover the area "extra good," we'd turn to comics and puzzles and filler ads and articles about some guy in Georgia who is collecting tin cans. And maybe that is all right for some of readers, but I'd rather use the space we have effectively than spread out four pages over 20.

Cable news networks spread out four pages over 20. Sure, they cover the world. Which you would think you'd need 24 hours to do. But parts of the world aren't good ratings grabbers. No one wants to be depressed talking about the Sudan. Not when Britney is dancing on MTV. And no one wants to cover the news anymore, anyway. They'd rather show two minutes of "news" and five minutes of two guys arguing about what the news means. "Objective" used to mean you'd get the story right. Now it means, instead, you get twice as much screaming.

And court cases are great to cover, because you don't have to get all political. Cable news reporters might want to cover the "hard issues," but cable news executives would rather not have 30 minutes on the Iraq war. What a bummer. You can't even think of a snappy title for that, or theme music. And there is only so many times Keith Olberman or Bill O'Reilly can stake out their positions. Now OJ! That's something (most) everyone can agree on. And those who can't agree want to watch anyway.

For these networks -- all of them -- OJ is ratings gold. He's a star, in real crime world. And the fact that he just popped up so unexpectedly makes them giddy. They had given up on the Juice, had moved on to others, like Anna Nicole and Robert Blake. But no one beats the Juice. No one. It's like Michael Jordan coming back to the Bulls after baseball, or Elvis to music after the Korean War. This is the greatest comeback ever for a double murderer! The news networks are ecstatic.

Not me. I hope that if OJ is guilty, this time he goes to jail. (And even if he isn't guilty, well, kharma never forgets.) But I don't want to live through 1994 again. I saw the original; I don't need a sequel. Someone wake me when it's over.