Any debate over the best show in TV history would have dozens of candidates. But there is no debate over the single worst program in television history – The Jerry Springer Show.
For 27 seasons and 3,891 lurid episodes, Jerry Springer lowered the TV bar, then dug a ditch and lowered the bar to hell.
The new Netflix documentary series, Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, looks back at the series TV Guide correctly called the worst show ever. If you never watched Jerry Springer, be ready to be amazed that this was ever allowed on TV.
Springer was mayor of Cincinnati from 1977-78 before shifting to TV where he was an anchor and commentator, winning 10 regional Emmy Awards. For reasons left unexplained in the documentary, Springer (Stephen Colbert could play him in a TV movie) moved to Chicago to host a syndicated afternoon talk show, in the Oprah/Donahue mode. It was sincere, and thoughtful, and … m’eh. The ratings stunk, and the show was relegated to 2 a.m. time slots. Liberated in the new timeslot, the show became raunchier with “funny, sexy stuff” under the direction of a villainous Svengali, executive producer Richard Dominick.
A turning point for the show (and for society) was an episode featuring Ku Klux Klan members who were allowed to spew their racist and anti-Semitic language. Throwing a match on kerosene, Springer (or truthfully, his puppet master Dominick) introduced members of the Jewish Defence League to the show. A five-alarm brawl broke out, much to the shock and delight of the audience.
“It was horrible,” says producer Toby Yoshinura, profiled in the doc.
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“It was vile,” says a Chicago media critic Robert Feder.
“It was brilliant,” says Dominick.
And a new Jerry Springer show was born.
Nothing was off the table to Dominick. He wanted a show that would attract viewers with the sound off, and who could resist watching a couple of angry skanks ripping each other’s hair out? “There was no line to be drawn,” Dominick says. “I would execute someone on television if I could,” and I don’t doubt he would. Staffers are shown pumping up the anger in guests to ensure that a fight, verbal or hopefully physical, would break out.
The worse the show got, the higher the ratings. Springer became a sensation, eventually beating daytime TV queen Oprah Winfrey in the ratings. Springer became a major celebrity, appearing on David Letterman and Conan O’Brien and on magazine covers like Rolling Stone. (I was surprised the documentary did not mention his appearance on The Simpsons, surely the ultimate imprimatur of pop culture fame.)
There was backlash, especially after a fight-free episode featuring a man who married a horse. But nothing hurt the show, until a notorious incident involving the murder of a show guest forced the series to tone down the exploitation, signalling the beginning of the end of Jerry Springer.
Who was to blame for the horrors of The Jerry Springer Show? Dominick is the main culprit, a man whose moral compass pointed only towards ratings success. Springer shares a lot of the blame, although he remains somewhat of a cypher. To the detriment of the documentary, he is not interviewed (he died last year). He is shown in clips defending the show, sometimes in high-minded BS about free speech, other times using the excuse that “it’s just television”.
Springer was certainly a sell-out. He may have tried to assuage his guilt (if he felt any) with Jerry’s Final Thoughts at the end of each episode, his pious homilies about loving one another, or something like that. The documentary barely mentions Jerry’s Final Thoughts.
The ultimate blame for the success of Jerry Springer lies not with Springer, or Dominick.
There is a telling clip near the end of the series. The show recruited some proud rednecks to be mocked and jeered by the Springer audience. A dimpled, smiling young white girl, clearly proud of the withering witticism she is about to unleash, asks one of the rednecks, “why don’t you go to a tanning bed to get rid of that red neck?”
She is the classic Springer Show audience member; predominantly female, predominantly white folk who came to jeer the rednecks and losers on display. Springer owed his success to millions of people like her. As Cassius says to Brutus in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
