The Jerry Springer Show is a television tabloid talk show hosted by Jerry Springer, a former politician, broadcast in the United States and other countries. It is videotaped at the NBC Tower studios of WMAQ-TV in Chicago and is distributed by NBC Universal, although it is not currently broadcast on any NBC-owned stations. It has been broadcasted in syndication during the high morning, afternoon, and late night hours of many TV stations since the early 1990s.

The show is ostensibly a talk show where troubled or dysfunctional families come to discuss their problems before a studio audience so that the audience or host can offer suggestions on what can be done to resolve their situations. In actuality, the show has come to epitomize the so-called "trash TV talk show", as each episode of the show focuses on topics such as adultery, bestiality, divorce, homophobia, homosexuality, incest, infidelity, pedophilia, pornography, racism, strange fetishes, or transvestism, which frequently result in fighting between guests. At one point, the show proudly boasted that it was voted the "Worst TV Show Ever" by TV Guide magazine. Currently, the show's slogan is "an hour of your life you'll never get back". The Jerry Springer Show has received widespread criticism and caused many controversies for a variety of reasons including its elements of prurience, foul language and the exploitation of the vulnerable.

On July 15, 2007, it was announced that Springer was picked up by NBC-Universal through the 2009-2010 season.

Production

Format

A typical episode of Springer begins with a title card warning parents that the show may contain content inappropriate for children. The warning often has sound effects; for example, in Season 17, it can be either a crying clown or a toilet flushing. The warning is followed by the opening sequence, which since the fifteenth season has usually consisted of clips from past Springer episodes. After the opening sequence, the screen cuts to Springer entering the stage, usually being greeted by audience applause and the "Je-rry, Je-rry" chant. Once the audience settles down, he welcomes the viewer to the show, introduces a particular situation, and interviews a guest who is experiencing it. After finishing the interview, Springer announces the entrance of another guest whom the first guest would like to confront. The second guest enters the stage, and a confrontation between the two guests usually occurs, often breaking down into a brawl that is eventually broken up by on-set security personnel. Once the fight is broken up, Springer interviews the second guest about the situation faced by the first guest.

This cycle is repeated about twice for other sets of guests on the show. Once all guests have told their stories, there is a "question and answer" segment where audience members ask guests questions relevant to their situations, although usually their questions come to insult a guest. Finally, Springer ends the show with a segment titled "Final Thought", in which he shares his feelings about the stories he has heard for the day's show. He ends the segment with the concluding statement, "Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other".

Generally, Springer tends to present his program standing up in the stands rather than the main stage.

Sometimes the show will have a look back at an early episode. These have been rebranded as Classic Springer. These shows are interspersed with commentary from Springer, usually before and after commercial breaks.

Set

The program is taped at the NBC Tower operated by NBC television station WMAQ in Chicago, Illinois. The set for the show has changed twice since its current layout. When the show first started in 1991 it was very bland with its white walls and bright colored shapes on the walls. Jerry himself also looked like a banker. In 1993 when everything changed including the format of the show the studio received at makeover to try and make it look at little warmer and inviting. The stage walls were given a red brick finish with two book cases each side of the blue logo. The stage was also more of a semi circle shape that stuck out into the audience. This also allowed space for a cat walk to be laid out for such "Stripper Wars!" shows etc. In late 2000, the whole set changed again to it's current look, which is more "industrial" looking.

Security

Security is provided by off-duty officers of the Chicago Police Department. Steve Wilkos was the director of security for the show from 1994 to 2007, when he left Springer staff to pursue his own self-titled talk show.

History

1990s

The Jerry Springer Show debuted on September 30, 1991, with fellow talk-show host Sally Jessy Raphaël as its first guest. Initially, both Springer and Sally were distributed by Multimedia Entertainment, before Sally was sold to Universal in the mid '90s, with Springer at first going to the former Universal and later to Studios USA.

It started as a politically-oriented talk show, a longer version of the commentary for which Springer had gained local fame as a reporter and anchor. Guests early on included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson, and the topics included homelessness and gun politics, as well as social effects of rock and roll, featuring shock rock stars like GG Allin and GWAR as guests. Low ratings led it to be run by a new producer, Richard Dominick. The search for higher ratings led the program towards tawdry and provocative topics, becoming more and more successful as it became more and more obscene, although it still covered issues that were more sensitive and less sensational. It became, through Springer's own admittance, a "freak show" where guests seek their 15 minutes of fame through discussion and demonstrations of deviant behavior. 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.

Controversies over authenticity and violence

In the late 1990s, the show was quite popular and controversial, so much so that it caused contemporaries like Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, and Ricki Lake to "revamp" their own shows in order to improve ratings. However, major figures in television, along with many religious preachers, had called for the show's removal and considered it to be of bad taste.

In 1997 and 1998, the show reached its ratings peak, at one point becoming the first talk show in years to beat The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, it had since been featuring almost non-stop fighting between guests, triggering mass protests from TV personalities and some priests. The Chicago City Council suggested that if the fistfights and chair-throwing were real, then the guests should be arrested for committing acts of violence in the city, as alderman Ed Burke was concerned over the fact that the off-duty Chicago police officers serving as security guards for the program failed to take legal action against fighting guests. Springer explained that the violence on the program "look[ed] real" to him, also arguing that the fighting on the show "never, ever, ever glamorizes violence". Ultimately, the City Council chose not to pursue the matter. Because of this probe and other external and internal pressures, the fighting was taken off the show temporarily before being allowed again in a less violent nature. In the years of the show having toned down the fights, viewership has declined but remains respectable by newer standards of daytime television ratings.

However, there has been continuous debate over the actual authenticity of the fighting. Marvin Kitman, television critic for the Newsday newspaper, felt that the fighting had been choreographed beforehand. Christopher Sterling of the George Washington University media department compared the program to professional wrestling. Sixteen former guests of The Jerry Springer Show, who were interviewed on various U.S. media outlets such as the entertainment news program Extra, Rolling Stone magazine, and The New York Post newspaper, even claimed there was a "fight quota" for each episode and that they and other guests were encouraged to fight one another. Springer himself even admitted in an October 2000 interview with the Reuters news agency:

I would never watch my show. I'm not interested in it. It's not aimed towards me. This is just a silly show.

Early 2000s

In 2000, Springer was given a five-year, $30 million contract extension paying him $6 million per year. 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 homicide. 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. Upon news of the 52-year old woman's murder, a spokeswoman for the program issued a statement saying it was "a terrible tragedy.

In August 2000, Springer himself 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. On March 27, 2002, after 18 hours of deliberating from jurors, Mr. Panitz was convicted of the murder after a 10-day trial and sentenced to life.

In 2001, efforts from groups like the Parents Television Council and American Family Association made some advertisers decrease or stop their sponsorship of Springer. For the United Kingdom, the Independent Television Commission banned 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. The show also topped TV Guide magazine's 2002 list of the "The Worst TV Shows Ever". The phrase "Jerry Springer Nation" began to be used by some who see the program as being a bad influence on the morality of the United States. In addition, the phrase has shown the association of Springer with any "lowbrow" type of entertainment in general.

In 2003, a British opera inspired by the series, Jerry Springer: The Opera, began playing in the United Kingdom. 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.

Starting with the 2005 season, director of security Steve Wilkos occasionally hosted the show. Episodes that he hosted were intended to be more serious in tone than the typical Springer show.

Mid-2000s to present

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 and Springer himself being ranked at #32 and labeled an "American Pioneer". 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.

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. 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 first episode.

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

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

A recurring character, the comical "Reverend Shnorr", was introduced in 2007 to perform weddings on the program and counsel certain guests on "Biblical values". The security staff for the program also was given new additions, as starting in the seventeenth season, three female security guards were added. Certain professional athletes have come on the show as one-off security guards for some episodes. They include hockey player Joe Corvo, and mixed martial arts fighters Andrei Arlovski , Shonie Carter, and Bas Rutten.

Certain advertisers continue to avoid buying ad time for Springer. However, the show has continued to keep steady ratings in the February 2008 "Sweeps" period.

Executive producer Richard Dominick resigned after the end of the 17th season; Rachelle Consiglio, wife of former Springer security director Steve Wilkos will replace Dominick. The set decorations added during the 17th season will be removed.

Censorship

Springer is syndicated on various stations in the United States at various times of the day, whether in the morning, afternoon, or late evening. All syndicated episodes of Springer are edited for content for broadcast regardless of broadcast time to comply with FCC regulations regarding the broadcast of indecency and obscenity. Initially, profanity or other explicit language on the program was bleeped out, but later episodes used muting to edit out explicit language; in fact, mute censors can extend as far as to remove a group of many words or even an entire sentence, thus making some speech incomprehensible. In addition, nudity and the partial exposure of breasts or buttocks are pixelized out.

Too Hot For TV

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

See also

• Kenny Easterday
• Jerry Springer: The Opera
• "Jerry Springer" - A song about the show on Weird Al's 1999 release Running with Scissors

References

External links

• Official site
• MySpace Site
• The Jerry Springer Show at TV.com
• Jump The Shark: The Jerry Springer Show