Jerry Springer (talk show)

Each episode of Jerry Springer began with Springer entering the stage and being greeted by a standing audience (made up of mostly college students) pumping the air with their right hand, chanting "Jerry!, Jerry!". Beginning in the 2000s, Springer would arrive on stage by sliding down a stripper pole. He then shook hands with some of the audience members before introducing the episode's topic and guests. The topics were usually of an unsophisticated nature, such as infidelity and other relationship squabbles.[8][2][9] Often times the guests would become emotional and get involved in heated arguments with one another, resulting in outbursts and physical fighting.[9][10] On-screen security guards were present and tasked with managing the potential violence.[10]

Once all the guests had told their stories, there was usually a "question and answer" segment where audience members asked guests questions. In earlier seasons, the questions tended to be serious. However, these questions gave way to insults as the show progressed. Throughout the show, some women in the audience would sometimes flash their breasts in exchange for "Jerry Beads" (Mardi Gras-style beads with the show logo). In later seasons, serious questions were typically mocked by the crowd with chants of "Go to Oprah!". Springer then ended the show by giving a formal lecture, sitting by himself on the stage, on the principles of refined values in regards to the featured guests.[3] Springer's "final thought" segment ended with the concluding statement, "Till next time, take care of yourselves and each other," which was his sign-off line during his days as a newscaster in Cincinnati.

Generally, Springer tended to present his program standing up, pacing the aisle steps between the seating areas, rather than having a podium or mark on the main stage. This was thought to be to protect himself from the potential violence occurring on the stage.[3] He deliberately chose a role as straight man; he never directly involved himself in the arguments. "I'm always wearing a suit, I don't curse and I wasn't in fights involving Jell-O," Springer stated in retrospective.[11]

Sometimes the show would have a look back at previous episodes. They had rebranded as Classic Springer, some with a false Masterpiece Theatre-like theme and patina. These shows were interspersed with commentary from Springer himself, usually before and after commercial breaks.

According to NBC, the set for the show has had three major changes over the years. When the show first started in 1991, it was very basic with white walls, in an effort to capture the feel of fellow talk show Donahue, Jerry's haircut and glasses even seeming to make him look like Phil Donahue. The general look of this set was carried over when the series first moved to Chicago in September 1992, with an unpolished, open air look and bright colored shapes.

In the fall of 1994, a few months after the series underwent its format overhaul, the studio received a makeover to make it look a bit warmer and more inviting, complete with brick walls, artwork, and bookcases. The stage walls were designed so that they could be projected outward into the audience, making room for a catwalk that was used in shows such as the 1997 episode Stripper Wars!. In late 2000, the whole set was changed to its "industrial" look, changes initially welcomed due to the reduced ratings of the 1999–2000 season. In 2007 the set was slightly changed, with a larger studio audience, bigger stage, and a balcony, which was above the stage and ended at the pole. Springer used this as his main entrance by sliding down the pole. The logo and stage design were carried across to the new studio in Stamford, Connecticut with only a few changes and stayed as such until the end of the run.

Jerry Springer debuted on September 30, 1991, with a family reunion as the topic of its first show. Initially, Jerry Springer was distributed by Multimedia Entertainment, later going to the former Universal and then to Studios USA.[12]

Originally seen in only the four markets where Multimedia owned TV stations, it was dramatically different from the later version of the show. It started as an issues-oriented and political talk show, a longer version of the commentary for which Springer had gained local fame as a reporter and anchor (not unlike Donahue during this time), and for its first season, was even taped at Springer's former station, WLWT in Cincinnati.[13] Guests early on included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson, and the topics included homelessness and gun politics,[14][15] as well as the social effects of rock music, featuring shock rock star GG Allin,[16][17] El Duce from The Mentors and GWAR as guests.[18][19]

For its second season in the fall of 1992, the series was purchased by the NBC owned-and-operated stations, thus allowing it to finally achieve full national distribution, and production was moved to its longtime home at Chicago's NBC Tower (with Springer leaving his longtime position at WLWT in order to do so). Series creator and original executive producer Burt Dubrow became Senior Vice-President at Multimedia Entertainment and continued to oversee the show, while bringing in Terry Weible Murphy to become the EP. In April 1994, Multimedia threatened cancellation if ratings didn't improve by that November, which led to a major overhaul that saw Murphy's departure and replacement by fellow Jerry Springer producer Richard Dominick, under Dubrow's purview.

The search for higher ratings led the program gradually towards provocative topics, becoming more successful as it became geared towards youthful viewers (modeled after Ricki Lake's popular talk show) by introducing more controversial topics. However, there were still some traditional and serious topics featured on the show at this time, even with the format change.

By December 1994, the show started featuring such topics as "My boyfriend turned out to be a girl" and "I want my man to stop watching porn!", as well as investigating which are sexier: bigger or smaller breasts on women.[20]

In 1995, there were two performances by Comedy Central transgender star Jade Esteban Estrada.[13] It became a "freak show" where guests seek their 15 minutes of fame through discussion and demonstrations of deviant behavior.[21] In 1996, Springer wanted people to send him videotapes explaining why they wanted Springer to tape a show in their home.[22] Its extraordinary success has led it to be broadcast in dozens of countries. The show gained so much popularity that for a while it was the top-rated daytime talk show in the United States.[23]

In 1998, several stations that carried Jerry Springer, including WLWT in Cincinnati where Springer was a news anchor, refused to carry the episode "I Married A Horse", which led to it being pulled before airing.[24] The same year, Barry Diller, the head of Jerry Springer parent company Studios USA, would order the producers of Jerry Springer to end the show's trademark scripted brawls among guests amid growing controversy.[25] However, this decision didn't appear to damage the show's ratings too much, with the show finishing only one-tenth behind longtime daytime talk show leader Oprah by July 1999.[26]

In 1999, the show was parodied in the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, with Dr. Evil and his son Scott discussing being evil. Along with Jerry, Steve Wilkos and Todd Schultz played themselves in the movie.

In 2000, Springer was given a five-year, $30 million contract extension paying him $6 million per year.[27] The same year, a married couple, Ralf and Eleanor Panitz, were guests on an episode of the show entitled "Secret Mistresses Confronted" with Mr. Panitz's ex-wife, Nancy Campbell-Panitz, in which they complained about Ms. Campbell-Panitz's behavior and accused her of stalking them. Hours after it was broadcast on July 24, 2000, Ms. Campbell-Panitz was found dead in a home that the three were fighting over, and Florida police soon confirmed that they were treating the death as a homicide.[28] It was then reported that Mr. Panitz, having been issued a first-degree murder warrant for the death, was trying to flee to Canada to avoid prosecution.[29] Upon news of the 52-year-old woman's murder, a spokeswoman for the program issued a statement saying that it was "a terrible tragedy."[30]

In August 2000, Springer appeared on CNN's Larry King Live to discuss the incident, claiming that it "had nothing to do with the show" and that his talk show does not glamorize deviant behavior.[31] On March 27, 2002, after a 10-day trial and 18 hours of deliberating from jurors, Mr. Panitz was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.[32]

In 2001, efforts by groups like the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association forced some advertisers to decrease or to stop their sponsorship of Jerry Springer.[33] In the United Kingdom, the Independent Television Commission banned Jerry Springer and other tabloid talk programs from being shown on television during daytime hours on school holidays in response to numerous parental complaints and concerns about children's potential exposure to the salacious content (there was a short-running British version of the show made for ITV called The Springer Show that was lighter and more tongue-in-cheek).[34] The show also topped TV Guide magazine's 2002 list of "The Worst TV Shows Ever"; for a time, the show itself would even frequently boast about this ranking in its opening credits as a form of self-deprecation.[35]

In 2003, a British opera inspired by the series, Jerry Springer: The Opera, began playing in the United Kingdom.[36] The same year, it was revealed that a group of guests from Hayward, California faked a "love triangle" for an appearance on two episodes of the show; one guest in the group was murdered, but Hayward police determined that his appearance was not connected to his murder.[37]

By 2005, security director Steve Wilkos became a cult figure on his own, and would close each show walking down a hallway engaging in casual talk with one of the more colorful guests of the preceding episode. He also would occasionally host the show. Episodes that he hosted were intended to be more serious in tone than the typical episode of Jerry Springer.[38] Wilkos left Jerry Springer at the end of the 2006–2007 season to pursue his own talk show, The Steve Wilkos Show.[39]

In 2005, the program became a subject of criticism in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, being called "TV's lowest life-form"[40] and Springer himself being ranked at 32 and labeled an "American Pioneer".[41] Goldberg also claimed that Springer was knowingly capitalizing on the disadvantages of his guests and the stupidity of his audience, also citing the controversial episode revolving around the man who married his horse.[42]

In January 2006, the show was renewed for its sixteenth season, ending speculation that Springer would leave his talk show to run for elected office in Ohio, where he is the former mayor of Cincinnati.[43] By this time, the show began to poke fun at itself by using the taglines "An Hour of Your Life You'll Never Get Back" and "Wasting Technology Since 1991." On May 12, 2006, Springer celebrated his show's 3,000th episode by throwing a party on the show (which no one but Jerry showed up to humorously), and showed many clips, including rare excerpts from the show. 2006 also saw the addition of fan favorite Reverend Shnorr, a drunken womanizing character who would often get into heated confrontations with guests while bringing a fresh comedic edge to the show. The character was created by then-promotions director Brian Schnoor while studying Improv at Chicago's famed Second City Theater in the 1990s. By December 2007, Rev. Shnorr merchandise was out-selling the show's popular security T-shirts on NBC's website.

In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, a Commercial High Court trial was scheduled for summer 2006 to resolve a dispute between Flextech Television and NBCUniversal over Flextech in 2002 cancelling its 1998 contract to broadcast Jerry Springer in the UK as long as new episodes continued to be produced in the U.S.[44]

In 2007, security director Wilkos left Jerry Springer to host his own syndicated talk show. The Steve Wilkos Show was also shot at the NBC Tower in Chicago and produced by Richard Dominick, who continued to produce Jerry Springer as well. On July 15, 2007, it was announced that Springer was picked up by NBC-Universal through the 2009–2010 season.[45] Also, VH1 ran a documentary series The Springer Hustle, going "behind the scenes" of the show,[46] having already run another Springer-related documentary in 2005 titled When Jerry Springer Ruled the World.[47] Springer's appearance on the NBC television network show America's Got Talent led to an increase in viewership for the first quarter of 2007.[48] Steve Wilkos filled in for Springer during the beginning of America's Got Talent.

The security staff for the program also was given new additions, as starting in the seventeenth season, three female security guards were added.[49] Certain professional athletes have come on the show as one-off security guards for some episodes. They include hockey players Joe Corvo[50] and Adam Burish, and mixed martial arts fighters Andrei Arlovski,[51] Shonie Carter,[52] and Bas Rutten.

While certain advertisers continued to avoid buying ad time for Jerry Springer,[53] the series continued to keep steady ratings in the February 2008 "Sweeps" period.[54]

Executive producer Richard Dominick resigned shortly after the start of the 18th season; Rachelle Consiglio, wife of Steve Wilkos and longtime Senior Producer, replaced Dominick. The set decorations added during the 17th season were removed.[55]

On May 19, 2009, the show recorded its last episode at WMAQ-TV's NBC Tower in Chicago, Illinois, where it had been videotaped since 1992, midway through the second season.[56] Beginning with the 2009–10 season, production was moved to the Rich Forum in Stamford, Connecticut after NBCUniversal received tax credits from the state of Connecticut to move Springer, along with Maury and Steve Wilkos to the Nutmeg State, along with NBC Sports. Jerry was quoted as saying he was not happy with the move, but understood the financial reasons for which it was being done, and was working to secure jobs for those on his staff who wished to move with the show. Since moving to Stamford, the show has gone through a number of changes; the set has become more highly colored with new lighting, new chairs for guests, two new security guards, and a change to its iconic theme music.

The show aired its 20th anniversary episode, which was taped in Times Square, on October 27, 2010. Jerry Springer's twenty-first season premiered on September 19, 2011, debuting new graphics. On September 17, 2012, Jerry Springer began airing in widescreen and 1080i, in conjunction with its 22nd-season premiere.

In October 2014, it was announced that the show had been renewed by NBC Universal through September 2018.[57] The 25th season of Jerry Springer began on September 21, 2015. With the 25th season anniversary of the show, Rachelle Wilkos, wife of Steve Wilkos departed as the executive producer of the show. Wilkos would transition full-time as the executive producer of her husband's show, as Kerry Shannon, another longtime producer, was promoted as the show's new executive producer. Despite her departure from the show, Wilkos briefly remained with the show as a consultant.

On June 13, 2018, the industry publication Broadcasting & Cable reported that the series had ceased production and that the 2018–19 season forward would solely consist of reruns. The last first-run episode aired on July 26, 2018. Springer had originally intended to retire after the show ended production.[11][2]

The CW acquired rerun rights to the show to fill an hour in their daytime timeslot that previously aired The Robert Irvine Show. The CW, which began airing the show on September 10, 2018, has first right to the episodes that have been produced but remain unaired, which number in the "dozens." The CW also had the right to ask that production of the series be revived in the future. The CW announced its intent to end its reruns of Springer in September 2021 as a reorganizing of its programming lineup (replacing its daytime block with a Saturday night lineup, which neither the CW nor its predecessors have programmed since they launched in 1995).[58]

An additional block of reruns was offered to Springer's existing affiliate base for the 2018–19 season;[59] those still carrying that rerun block transitioned to Springer's new show Judge Jerry on September 9, 2019.[60]

During the show's most popular era in the late 1990s, Jerry Springer released videotapes and later DVDs marketed as Too Hot for TV. They contained uncensored nudity, profanity, and violence that was edited out of broadcasts in order to conform to FCC standards for broadcast decency. The releases sold and rented remarkably well[74] and inspired similar sets from other series. Eventually, the show started producing similar "uncensored" monthly pay-per-view/video on demand specials as well as part of In Demand's Too Much for TV brand of PPV/on-demand content.

In 2015, Springer brought the Too Hot for TV format to the WWE Network for a series of episodes featuring WWE's most controversial segments.

In 1999, ITV made 12 UK-based version episodes of the series Jerry Springer UK, filmed at the same studios as his US show.[75]

In 2005, another UK version was shown made for ITV titled The Springer Show as a replacement for Trisha Goddard, which defected to Channel 5. Initially Springer only signed a one-month deal.[76] It beat its talk-show rival Trisha Goddard five to one in the ratings, despite it being a subdued and more tongue-in-cheek version of the U.S. show.[77] The series was broadcast from June 4, 2005 until July 6, with the remaining 10 episodes broadcast from September 5 until September 16, 2005, when The Jeremy Kyle Show fully replaced the show.

From 2002 to 2008, a French-Belgian version of the show was produced, hosted by Simon Monceau. For most of its run, it was produced and recorded in Belgium. Contrary to the original version, Ça va se savoir ! clearly made public that the show's guests were in fact actors, which was also indicated during the end titles.[78]

Legend:   Currently airing   Ended   Unknown version  

Country	Local title	Host(s)	Network	Start date	End date
Belgium  France	Ça va se savoir !	Simon Monceau	AB3	25 March 2002	July 2008
Greece  Cyprus	Επιτέλους Μαζί Από Καρδιάς	Andreas Mikroutsikos	ANT1 Alpha TV	September 1996 12 September 2005	July 2000 30 June 2006
Greece  Cyprus	Μια νέα αρχή	Sia Liaropoulou	STAR Channel	20 October 1997	June 1998
Greece  Cyprus	Τα μυστικά της αγάπης	Sia Liaropoulou	STAR Channel	19 October 1998	June 2000
India	Jerry di Adalat[79]	unknown	Spark Punjabi TV	unknown	unknown
Russia	Окна Okna	Dmitri Nagiev	TNT (2002—2005) STS (2002)	20 May 2002	29 April 2005
Russia	Пусть говорят Pust' Govoryat	Andrey Malakhov (2005–2017) Dmitri Borisov (2017–present)	Channel One Russia	23 July 2001 official name with 30 August 2005	present
Russia	Говорим и показываем Govorim i pokazyvaem	Leonid Zakoshansky	NTV	2011	April 2017[80]
	Прямой эфир Pryamoy Efir	Mikhail Zelensky (2011–2013) Boris Korchevnikov (2013–2017)	Russia-1	4 April 2011	25 August 2017
Russia	Андрей Малахов. Прямой эфир Andrei Malakhov. Pryamoy Efir	Andrei Malakhov		19 October 2017	Present
Thailand	unknown[79]	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown
United Kingdom	Jerry Springer UK	Jerry Springer	ITV	20 September 1999	19 October 1999[81]
	The Springer Show			4 June 2005	16 September 2005
United States	Jerry Springer	Jerry Springer	Syndication, The CW	30 September 1991	26 July 2018
Brazil	Você Na TV	João Kleber	RedeTV	8 April 2013	3 April 2017