It's common for a polarizing figure's death to be met with mixed emotions, but it takes a unique life to evoke a combination of widespread affection and revulsion. Jerry Springer is such a man.
This is not speaking ill of the dead. Springer, who died Thursday at the age of 79, long considered himself more of a circus officiant than a talk show host. In 2002 TV Guide declared "The Jerry Springer Show," his defining contribution to the medium, to be the worst TV show of all time. Instead of being chastened, Springer and his producer Richard Dominick incorporated the questionable encomium into each episode's introduction.
Twenty-one years later one might reconsider whether that rusty medal still fits. But there's no doubt the worst of TV's worst have Springer to thank for napalming a trail for them. Long before TLC rebranded from The Learning Channel to the home of Honey Boo-Boo and "Dr. Pimple Popper," Springer drained the human soul's pus before raving studio audiences to slake the guilty pleasure of millions.
Were it not for what Springer's syndicated gladiator pit revealed about the public's appetite for wig-pulling, clothes ripping and bleeped-out epithets, we may have never been blessed/cursed with "Cheaters," "Bad Girls Club," "Bridezillas," "The Real Housewives" franchise and so many other unscripted reality rhinestones. Springer is the reason Maury Povich found his calling as daytime's go-to paternity testing referee.
And though he never liked the guy, "The Jerry Springer Show" was at the very least a paving stone on Donald Trump's path to election. Like Trump, Springer supercharged his popularity by plugging into the dark heart of humanity's nadir to generate huge ratings.
"The thing that annoys me about Trump is that he took my show and brought it to the White House," he said on a 2019 episode of AOL Build.
"The Jerry Springer Show" aired nearly 5,000 episodes over 27 seasons before its 2018 cancellation. Near the end of its run people stopped noticing it was on. But for a brief ridiculous span in the mid-to-late '90s, Springer established himself as the anti-Oprah by making people feel better about their lives by cynical comparison.
Day after day — night after night, in some markets — no matter how miserable we were, at least we weren't sitting in front of Springer being asked if we knew why we were there. It was not quite a validation of our life decisions as a celebration that other people were making poorer ones. And it capitalized on our propensity to be judgmental.
While Winfrey devoted her talk show to vulnerable conversations and glossy celebrity interviews, Springer lured the rabble with titillating titles like "Attack of the KKK Dad," "I Have Sex With My Sister," "My High-School Crush Had Sex With My Aunt," and the talk show title Hall-of-Famer "I Married a Horse."
Nearly all of these episodes delivered more or less what they advertised. Family members, friends, and neighbors would square off over instigations related to infidelity, paternity doubts, incest and the aforementioned equine matrimony.
The audience, mainly consisting of college students, would boo in disgust, cheer the wronged party and chant "Jer-RY! Jer-RY! Jer-RY!" once the flailing began. As the mayhem broke loose Springer stood nearby, quietly shaking in his head in feigned dismay as a squad of off-duty Chicago cops, led by the host's lieutenant Steve Wilkos, broke up the hair-pulling.
Springer's daily fight fests soon matched "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in popularity. In early 1998 it managed to unseat the media queen's top ratings perch, with around 12 million viewers regularly tuning in to enjoy their fellow citizens violently throw chairs, flowers, food and fists at each other. Such theatrics inured us to the violence taking place in front of us, transformed it into comedy, flattening the real people being emotionally, verbal and physically attacked into two-dimensional characters. It was deplorable. It was pain passed off an entertainment. A video compilation of outtakes, "Jerry Springer: Too Hot for TV," sold hundreds of thousands of copies via mail order.
The host's legacy wasn't supposed to take this shape. Before he lorded over civilization's inch-by-inch decline he was a Cincinnati politician – a councilman first, although he was forced to resign in 1974 after he was caught soliciting a sex worker with a check. A check. Springer, a Democrat, went on to serve as mayor and, following failed runs for higher office, leapt into TV news. Eventually he became Cincinnati's most popular anchor, which would lead to his most consequential opportunity.
"The Jerry Springer Show" launched in 1991 with a politics and public affairs focus. That fall also marked the debuts of "The Montel Williams Show," "The Jenny Jones Show" (which, like "Springer," taped in Chicago) and "The Maury Povich Show."
There's no doubt that TV's worst have Springer to thank for napalming a trail for them.
The original owner of "Springer," Multimedia Entertainment, had an eye on establishing its host as a figure worthy of filling the void left by daytime legend Phil Donahue upon his eventual retirement. But in its first seasons, Springer's ratings were abysmal.
In April 1994 Dominick, the show's executive producer, was ordered to increase viewership by any means necessary. As he told me in a 1998 interview for the Seattle Times, "Jerry and I took a walk around Chicago. We said, `Hey, let's be outrageous.' And at that time I said to the producers, don't bring it to me if it's not interesting with the sound off."
Four years later, "The Jerry Springer Show" was doing precisely that: quietly or silently playing in the background at bars and restaurants, even doctor's waiting rooms. That year Springer starred in a critically savaged movie parody of his show called "Ringmaster," which coincided with the release of his memoir, also titled "Ringmaster." It would also be spoofed in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "South Park."
Tragically, the show's popularity also helped to kill "The Phil Donahue Show," a legitimate contributor to the nation's social and political discourse for 26 years. It ended in 1996.
To be fair, "The Jerry Springer Show" wasn't the only daytime talker engaged in a race to the bottom. Each of Springer's 1991 TV cohort stampeded that way. Really, "Jenny Jones" started it. It's simply that over the distance, he proved to be the race's Secretariat. Coincidentally "The Jerry Springer Show" also became a controversy magnet. Springer and its producers were accused of staging its dramas, which they denied.
Their encouragement of the show's fights is irrefutable, evidenced in the boxing ring "ding!" that would peal whenever one guest would hurtle toward another. (Producers dialed back the violence in the aughts, especially after Dominick was canned in 2008 for allegedly encouraging Wilkos to subdue an unruly guest with a choke-hold.)
He was condemned for exploiting his contributors, which he long countered by claiming the show gave a platform to people society other otherwise ignore. "You know how many weird, crazy people we put on TV because they're celebrities? Who says 'No, you can't go on'?" he told his audience in a speech he gave at 2019's Edinburgh TV Festival. "Who said to Trump, 'You can't have "The Apprentice" because you're crazy?'"
In a Twitter thread, Dr. Sheryl Recinos recalled appearing in a show about homeless teens because producers had promised to pay $200 for her appearance. "He was mean on the show and kept getting the audience to yell at us, then brought out some fake psychologist," she said. "And [he] gave us $100 in ones. Steve guarded the door while he ran out of the building."
I only agreed to go on the show because he said he’d pay us $200. He was mean on the show and kept getting the audience to yell at us, then brought out some fake psychologist.
— Sheryl Recinos MD (@MdSheryl) April 27, 2023
And gave us $100 in ones. Steve guarded the door while he ran out of the building.
Springer was also sued several times, including in 2002 by the son of a former guest whose ex-husband murdered her hours following the airing of a segment about love triangles; and in 2019 by the family of a man that claimed his 2018 appearance on the show led to his suicide.
"The Jerry Springer Show" was a hotbed of LGBTQ and trans hysteria; for a sign of how poorly older episodes hold up, read how many queer slurs are incorporated into episode titles. (And yet, as the 2020 documentary "Disclosure" points out, as flawed as it and other daytime talk shows were, it was also an early forum for trans visibility on TV.) Not many viewers who made "Springer" a hit in its heyday thought about these things.
Each episode of "The Jerry Springer Show" ended, bizarrely, with the host signing off with a sermonizing "Final Thought" of what we were supposed to take away from its amateur wrestling bouts, ending with his admonition to "Take care of yourselves, and each other." As a whole, the series did the opposite of that, which Springer eventually came to admit.
Due to that candor he was something of a beloved celebrity and, in person, charming, convivial and politically knowledgeable. Even so, as another recently defenestrated talking head may soon discover, hitching his image to the show that bore his name narrowed his options.
An attempt to cultivate gravitas as a commentator on Chicago NBC-affiliate WMAQ-TV's local newscast proved so unpopular with viewers that Springer resigned after two appearances. He went on to host the 2007 and 2008 seasons of NBC's "America's Got Talent" before taking on a gig with the GSN as the host of a dating game show called "Baggage" from 2010 through 2015. His TV career's final thought came in 2022 after three seasons helming the syndicated "Judge Jerry."
From what can be gleaned from other interviews and statements over the years, Springer was neither deeply proud nor ashamed of his impact on popular culture via "The Jerry Springer Show" even as he debated what it wrought. (That is, other than birthing "The Steve Wilkos Show," which has been airing since 2007.) His go-to joke whenever someone congratulated him on the legacy of "The Jerry Springer Show" was some version of, "I'm sorry. I've ruined the culture."
Then again, consider what he told the 2008 graduates of his alma mater Northwestern University Law School at their commencement ceremony.
"Let's be honest – I've been virtually everything you can't respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a news anchor and a talk show host," he said. "Pray for me; if I get to heaven, we're all going."
