Flashback is a feature series that revisits key moments from TV news history with the Newsers that were part of them.
Like a lot of Gen-X journalists, Ted Rowlands remembers exactly where he was when Judge Lance Ito gaveled in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the winter of 1995. Just like Keanu Reeves, he was feeling Minnesota as a Duluth-based sports reporter for a local radio station, while working a TV gig on the side.
“Every day, our callers wanted to talk about the Minnesota Twins, but I was obsessed with the trial,” Rowlands remembers now. “I was a football fan, so I loved O.J. back then. He had risen above and beyond athletics into the mainstream. And then to have those accusations against him—you couldn’t wrap your head around it.”
Over the course of eight long months, America watched as Simpson and his legal “dream team” took on the mountain of evidence suggesting that he had killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman the year prior. By October, the verdict was in: not guilty on both counts.
Over 100 million people around the world tuned in for Simpson’s acquittal, and the aftershocks were immediate and long-lasting. The trial ended up reshaping Rowlands’ life as well; not long afterwards, he switched to the news beat and left the Midwest for the West Coast. Stints at ABC News and CNN eventually led to his current anchor spot at Court TV, which similarly saw its profile raised by its gavel-to-gavel Simpson coverage.
30 years later, Rowlands is getting a full circle moment as the executive producer of Court TV’s new seven-episode series, Trial & Error: Why Did O.J. Win? Premiering Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. ET the show re-opens the network’s case logs and sits down for new interviews with key players like former LAPD detective Mark Furhman, defense attorneys F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz, and relatives of both victims, including Tanya Brown and Fred Goldman.
“Our philosophy was, ‘Let’s go in with a critical eye and show how O.J. won,’” Rowlands says. “It was the perfect storm where, 30 years later, it’s pretty easy to say that the verdict doesn’t hold up.”
In an expansive interview, Rowlands reflects on how the landmark O.J. case reshaped the landscape for trial coverage, and his own experience getting to know Simpson—who died last year—later in his life.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
