The Jerry Springer Show: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music,
and more. We are your two Jervy Jervy of Jermaine Minutia.
I'm Alex Heigel, simple but effective, and I'm Jordan Ron Todd.

(00:31):
And as you may have guessed, we are here today
talk about one of the load stars of daytime television,
nay television period throughout the nineties, the Jerry Springer Show.
Springer died in April, and so we thought it'd be
fitting to examine his show and the legacy and or

(00:52):
crater it left on the base of both mainstream television
and American culture period. Jordan final thoughts.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, I mean, I think, whether or not we want
to admit it to ourselves, we were all Jerry Springer fans.
It's a show that appealed to our base level instincts.
It's the same part of us that can't resist rubbernecking
at a car accident. You know, the phrase train wreck
television seems a little too easy, But the Jerry Springer
Show made no bones about what it was. It was
basically a sanctioned hour where everyone could come together and say,

(01:23):
look at the weird people. And then, of course, after
all the chairs have been thrown and all the animals
have been defiled, you have Jerry come back at the
end with a televisual sermon to basically wrap everything up.
His final thoughts, who could ever forget take care of yourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
And each other? Yeah, it's yeah, were you. I wasn't
like banned for watching this show, but it was definitely
like my parents would have been like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, no, I do it is wrong? I mean I
do better right? I mean it reminds me of that
sketch from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, The Mitchell and Webb.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Look, I miss this. I completely miss this reference. But
I'm happy to hear you explain it. Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, it's one of my favorite British sketch shows. And
they do a fake preview for a very special TV
special called The Boy with an Arse for a Face,
and it features a pre oscar Olivia Coleman. But the
voiceovers say.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Continuing the sensitive freak show series, we'll be telling the
uplifting story of one boy's extraordinary bravery, as if that's
what you're interested in, rather than the fact that he's
got an.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Ass for a face.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Follow the trials and tribulations of one twelve year old
struggle to lead a normal life while also getting to
have a good old stare at the freak in a
way you can tell yourself is sort of okay, that's
the boy with an ass for a face, A story
of love and triumph, but.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
With loads of juicy pictures of a boy with an.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Ass for a face.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
This Sunday on.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Five Jerry Sprayer sort of has that whole feel to it.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
It's trying to position itself sort of in a demonious way,
and it's really there's nothing redeeming about it, which obviously
made it uncomfortable viewing back then in the nineties and
early two thousands, and troubling to discuss now.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
But you know, when it's nineteen ninety eight and you're
homesick from school and the price is right is over,
what else are you gonna watch?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah? I mean, I don't know, dude. I this was
fascinating researching this very much, So Yeah, I don't think
I like him, Like I really think he's in many
ways the ultimate boomer and oh yeah, I can't. I can't. No,
I can't say that because they always get really red
ass and leave mean comments on iTunes. But like talk

(03:41):
about a guy who sold out his ideals for like
a paycheck.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yes, started out working on Bobby Kennedy's campaign and wound up.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Having Yes. Yeah, they go it's really it's too fine
a point on it. But yeah, yeah, Sunrise Sunset. I
think that that's actually what American Pie is about. I did.
This is one of the most fascinating ones we've ever researched.
I'm extremely excited to get into it well, from the
horrifying circumstances of Springer's birth to his time in politics

(04:14):
before he ascended to the real seat of American power
daytime television, to the controversy surrounding his show and the
only chance you might have ever had to see Harvey
Kaitel play Jerry Springer. Here's everything you didn't know about
the Jerry Springer Show. Wow. Gerald Norman Springer was born

(04:37):
a day before Valentine's Day in nineteen forty four in
the literal actual London underground station of Highgate while was
being used as a shelter during the German bombing blitz
of London in World War Two. This just makes so
so much sense, his psychotic bent towards drama, coupled with
his ability to remain eerily placid throughout it all.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Of course, he was during the middle of a literal
bombing raid, and because I could bring anything back to
the Beatles. According to legend, John Lennon was also born
during a bombing raid during the blitz.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
But there's a good chance that that was just a myth.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
But and with this in mind, what do we think
about this actually just being a myth on Jerry's part too,
and the beginning of him being completely full of crab.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I don't think he's full of crab. I don't think
he lied about very much except for you know, we'll
get into the thing that he did lie about. But
I don't know, maybe that this seems reasonably true. I mean,
his parents were his family were German Jews who fled
from the Nazis. Some of his family was from Poland.
We know at least his both grandmothers died in the

(05:41):
concentration camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia. A great uncle did
as well, I've heard him say in other interviews that
twenty seven members of his family were killed by the
Nazis and they were staying in allegedly in East Finchley.
That's location, Yeah, exactly, and they got there before the
war broke out, great timing. They were staying in a

(06:03):
place that was designed for Jewish war refugees. You know, so,
I don't know it tracks. I don't think he would.
I don't know. Don't call this, don't start calling bulls
on stuff now, we'll never get through this episode. True,
as he explained to the BBC in twenty twelve, during
the war, women who were in the ninth Month would
often spend the night in subway stations because those were
the bomb shelters. After the war they moved to a

(06:26):
block of East Finchley called Belvedere Court, designed funnily enough
by architect Ernst Freud, the son of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
So there's another yo, whoa, yeah, another break in the
Springer wall.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Don't we talk about another of Freud's ancestors on here,
like his nephew or something. Maybe he was a painter,
you know what, he's a painter. I don't have that
in the roodexs Lucian Freud.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
I think his name is. Oh, was it the Bob
Ross thing? Maybe? Interesting well. Springer added to the BBC
that some of his earliest memories of growing up in
London were looking out of the window of their flat
and watching the buses that passed by, the fifty eight
and the one O two uh. And then they immigrated
to the States in nineteen forty nine. On the RMS

(07:11):
Queen Mary and Jerry has spoken very movingly of his
mom going up on taking him up to the top
deck of the ship and looking at the Statue of Liberty,
and he said, in silence, all the ship's passengers gathered
on the top deck of this grand ocean liner as
we passed by the Statue of Liberty. My mom told
me in later years that while we were shivering in

(07:32):
the cold, I had asked her, what are we looking at?
What does the statue mean? In German? She replied, eintig
a laz one day everything in'tigi.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Have we talked about it as a sketch on the
Dana Carvey Show with a German saying polite things, saying
nice things? Yeah, yeah, it was a pleasure babysitting Kevin.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, this is so weird.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
I mean, we can't mention large ships of the early
twentieth century without me going off on a tangent.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
I'm sorry, But.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
The Queen Mary. This is very interesting to me because
my daytime TV sick viewing in the nineties, aside from
Jerry Springer and The Price Is Right, was Unsolved Mysteries,
and they did a whole episode on the Queen Mary
because it is apparently remarkably haunted. I remember there was
this one story that is just seered into my brain

(08:27):
on Unsolved Mysteries about there was somebody alone in the
indoor pool and then they're there by themselves, and then
they hear this big splash in the pool, and they
hear like the sound of a child, like laughing and giggling.
All right, children, ghost children are scarier than.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Regular ghosts, like you know, That's how I feel it, anyway.
And so they hear this child and they see this
like splashing in the water, but there's nobody there. And
then they see these little wet footprints emerged from the
pool with nobody above them, which is horrifying. Yeah, pretty,
I wish you hadn't said that.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I'm sorry. Apparently a child had drowned that pool
years earlier.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
So immediately after seeing this episode of Unsolved Mysteries, I
became obsessed with the Queen Mary, which is now permanently
docked in Long Beach, California. That was the ship that
they used for the Posigoned Adventure as a location, and
so I insisted we go to see the Queen Mary
and because you know, it's a hotel.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
And it scared the hell out of me.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Apparently something like fifty five people died on board, and
those are just the ones that were like officially noted.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
There are probably more.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
In fact, there's probably likely more, because there's been over
one hundred and fifty reports of ghostly appearances and paranormal activity.
Sometimes it's relatively benign, like the smell of cigars and perfume,
or the creaking of doors or knocks, or sudden squeals
or laughter, the sounds of people talking in an empty room.
Sometimes they're a little more intense. One of the most

(09:53):
common apparitions is a bearded crewman in blue coveralls who
supposedly the ghost of a fireman who was by getting
crushed underneath a watertight door during a fire drill. It's
also supposedly a woman in white who roams the ship
picker poison. It's all terrifying. And now the fact that
this hotel is closed indefinitely while they're trying to sort

(10:14):
out their financial situation. I think the Queen Mary Hotel
went bankrupt. It's just a literal ghost ship, abandoned and
empty off the coast of Los Angeles. Wow, you're not
too far from there. You should check it out.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
You had me at drowning child. The Springers settled back
to The Springers settled in Queens, where his parents, his
mom worked in a bank and his dad worked as
a street vendor of toys, encouraged their kids to assimilate
to American culture by joining activities like baseball and boy Scouts.

(10:49):
Jerry's mom bought him a Yogi bearra Yankees jersey, which
changed his fortunes at school and jump started his lifelong
affection for the team.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Apparently, in his early broadcast career, he spoke with a
really the Queen's accent that got him, i'll say, affectionately
mocked by his colleagues.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, I mean someone talked about him coming to Cleveland
with a Boston like, an affected Boston accent, but also
like Queen's and the South because he went to New Orleans,
so he must have had just a deeply busies Yeah, exactly. So.
His folks also pushed Jerry and his older sister Evelyn
to stay informed about current events. Springer remembers being fascinated

(11:28):
by the civil rights movement and watching the nineteen fifty
six Democratic National Convention on television. He was impressed by
then Senator John F. Kennedy. Springer graduated from Forest Hills
High School, home of the Rhones, in nineteen sixty one,
which means that he was there at the same time
as both Simon and Garfunkle, which I think is funny.

(11:49):
I like to imagine them bullying Paul Simon. I like
to imagine he shoved Paul Simon into a locker. Then
he headed to New Orleans to attend Tulane, where he
majored in political science, and then to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois,
where he earned his juris doctor in nineteen sixty eight.
Springer began clerking for a law firm while at school

(12:09):
and having met Bobby Kennedy at a dinner party of
the year before he signed on for Kennedy's presidential campaign
in nineteen sixty eight, basically just in time for Kennedy
to be assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was in politics for all
the right reasons, Springer told Cincinnati's WVXU in twenty eighteen,
especially in the final years of his life. He cared

(12:30):
about people who were struggling, who were discriminated against, who
had no chance to succeed. Whi else being politics unless
you want to make life better for people who have nothing.
I mean, this is like some Forrest gum Zelig action
going on. I can't believe the number of historical moments
that he was directly involved in or affected by, from
Bobby Kennedy to the Blitz to one of the last

(12:53):
like immigration stories of being on the boat and looking
at Statue of Liberty to sign at Garfunkle, like yeah,
this is really nuts, and there's more and then yeah.
Galvanized by Kennedy's murder, Springer joined the anti war movement
again just in the nick of time to be at
the infamous Democratic National Convention in Chicago in nineteen sixty eight,

(13:16):
which turned into a landmark moment of police brutality.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
I have a lot to say about this, because I
wouldn't be surprised if this, more than any other single
event in Jerry Springer's life, directly led to the creation
of The Jerry Springer Show as we know it. The
police beatings in the streets of Chicago were filmed by
news crews from essentially every network and beamed into American
living rooms, a fact that was not lost on these protesters,
who chanted the whole world is watching while being pummeled.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
By police nightsticks.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Meanwhile, inside the convention, the Democratic Party was openly feuding
with one another, as the nomination was split just basically
due to the power vacuum left by Bobby Kennedy after
his death. So you had unprecedented hostility towards politicians of
the same party. You've got Senator Abe Ribakoff of Connecticut
openly accusing Chicago Mayor Dick Daly of quote Gestapo style

(14:05):
tactics in the streets of Chicago, to which Mayor Dally
retaliated by climbing on stage and hurling anti Semitic slurs
at the sky. And this was broadcast and then even
on Network News. You had commentators Gorvidell and William F.
Buckley who were posed as like having a.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Debate show, openly fighting with one another, dropping homophobic slurs
and calling each other crypto fascist or crypto Nazis. Something
fascist or Nazi was said, Yeah, you call me a
crypto fascist. When we're timed, I'm going to knock your
block off. Yes, exactly, like sock you in the mouth.
That something would be said.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
My point being, the floor of the nineteen sixty eight
DNC looked an awful lot like an episode of the
Jerry Springer Show. So seeing this chaos firsthand in the
street and in the Democratic National Convention and the resulting
headlines and furor that resulted as it was broadcast in
American homes, I have to imagine this had.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
A major impact on young Jerry Springer. Sure he must
have filed that away, it didn't matter. Whatever lessons this
left him were not strong enough to embrace the lore
of the horse. If you are a child of Holocaust survivors,
it's hard not to be a liberal. Spriner told WVXU,

(15:17):
twenty seven members of my family were wiped out. You're
learned that you never judge people on what they are,
but what they do. The following year, Springer, He's been
to every I just read he's been to every single
Democratic convention since nineteen sixty eight. That scans. That's incredible.
Imagine the Democratic National Convention being like your lollapalooza, like

(15:40):
I go every year. Yeah, just reconnect with the same
old people. Yeah, talk about the good times. Uh yeah.
Nineteen sixty nine, he landed in Cincinnati with the Frost
and Jacob's law firm and embarked on a campaign to
change the voting age in Ohio from twenty one to eighteen,
which was set him on a path that actually led

(16:00):
him to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor
of ratifying the twenty sixth Amendment, which dropped the voting
aged in eighteen across the entire country. I have something
to say, go on. Is it about a big vote, No,
it's about mister Rogers. Close.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
I just the similarities I'm starting to notice between Jerry
Springer and mister Rogers are kind of strange. How they
both kind of like sermonized during their shows, albeit in
very different ways. You've got Jerry with his final thoughts
and mister Rogers with the totality of his show. But
they both had their start in like completely different arenas

(16:39):
Fred Rodgers in the seminary and Jerry Springer in politics,
and they both testified before the government House authorities to
forward their causes, mister Rodgers to try to get PBS
off the ground and Jerry Springer to try to expand
the voting age. It kind of falls apart after that,
but with the whole horse copulation thing.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
But I don't I don't think Jerry Springer was like
a good person though, like I at least not in
the years that like quit your show, dude, Like if
you really want to like be such a if you
really want to go back to politics, that bad. I
mean there is something poetic about it, like whether or
not he like truly felt so trapped that he never

(17:20):
had any opportunity, or if you just liked the easy
paycheck like that's and I don't think I don't think
either of those readings are especially charitable. But also like, yeah, dude,
quit your job, like if your job, if you feel
that conflicted and like really want to help people and
be like a good liberal or whatever, like quit your
job or I don't know, donate a lot more money. Uh,

(17:42):
I don't know. Well, I'm putting the cart ahead of
the horse. You know.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Well, this is when you can start comparing him to
either Ben Affleck or Billy Joel in that he's somebody
yeah making connections here, aspires to something higher, but he's stuck.
He's trapped in this middle brow brow let's be honest
with ourselves, yeah, realm. And he's just sort of like
resigned himself to it, and he talks about but he

(18:06):
did have an interesting.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Justification for it.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I think we get to it later in the episode
where he said, you know, my show gives voice to
Americans that really don't get much exposure. I mean, again,
he's a politician at heart, so I'm sure he's great
at justifying whatever the hell he wants. But that's an
interesting I mean, it's a cheap defense because it's one
where you can't really respond to it.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
But yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't want
to get into this mud slinging, but kind of him anyway,
a cart horse. In nineteen seventy, Springer ran for the
US House of Representatives and, despite being such a died
in the wool liberal. He got forty five percent of

(18:50):
the vote against his Republican incumbent opponent. So that's a
difficult thing to pull off, especially in Ohio. Three days
after announcing his candidacy as an Army reservist, he was
called to active duty and sent off to Fort Knox
and then just picked up his campaign after he was
discharged getting sent into the Army reserves days after racking

(19:13):
up that kind of Oh he lost.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Never mind, I was gonna say that that almost seems
like some kind of Nixonian dirty trick thing where they like,
all right, this guy got a little too close to winning,
call him up, like.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, I know, right, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
I mean, also, it's interesting in nineteen seventy in Ohio
is when the massacre at Kent State happened. So I
wonder if there was just so much dissatisfaction with people
perceived as right wing that that would be at why
a young Democrat might have performed so well against the
Republican incumbent, because that would have been what November nineteen
seventy and Kent State was May of nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, that's true. I mean, they called him like the
boy wonder of Ohio politics. That's hilarious. Yeah, I mean was.
He then successfully ran for Cincinnati City Council in nineteen
seventy one when he was just twenty seven, and his
first action, Yeah, his first action was to propose a
ban on drafting Cincinnati residence into the into Vietnam. Ken
mayors like, do that like just violent? I think it

(20:09):
might have Yeah, I think it might have been ending.
I think it might have been a stunt. But you
know whatever, let him, you know, good for him.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Are you lying down on the bed with your feet
up like the telephone hour scene and bye by Bertie?

Speaker 2 (20:23):
I am, oh, yeah, yeah. I don't have very many
other good places to tape here, So this is this
is what we're doing. It'll really be hurting my neck
by hour three when you bring up another large boat.
Young Jerry was, as Cleveland consultant Patricia Garry told this
American Life quote, absolutely the most gifted natural politician I

(20:44):
ever saw. Mike Ford, who is a Democratic political strategist
at the national level, who worked on the Howard Dean's campaign,
which you know, but can't blame Mike Ford for that,
baw uh. He met Springer back in the seventies, and
he also told This American Life, I worked with Clinton
in ninety and ninety two, Tocaucus in eighty eight, nineteen eighty,

(21:06):
I worked for Kennedy seventy six, Jimmy Carter. Jerry Springer
was the best I've ever seen bar Nune. One major
triumphant coup that Springer pulled off that was recollected in
This American Life episode was he basically forced a confrontation
with another guy on city council and that should have

(21:26):
been like a routine procedural vote to get public funds
allocated for what would have been what was the Riverfront
Arena in Cincinnati, and Jerry didn't think it was right
to have public funds pay for it, but he successfully
turned the tide of public opinion against the position and
against his opponent on city Council. And in fact, the
Riverfront Arena was constructed with very few public funds. Just

(21:50):
so fascinating. I mean, yeah, that's I agree with him
on that. Around this time he married a woman named
Mickey Velton, who worked for the local mega corp Procter
and Gamble, but his his career and his marriage were
both derailed in nineteen seventy four, when police rated a
northern Kentucky bravl that was disguised as a health club
and uncovered in its records a personal check from Jerald

(22:14):
Springer to a prostitute, massage therapist, whatever for services rendered. Rookie. Yeah,
I mean, it's such a punchline. I think so many
people were. Most of the crux of the scandal was
not that it was bad for him to have visited
a sex worker, but to have paid for it with
a personal check. Anyway, Springer confessed to his infidelity and

(22:43):
took you know, was very contrite about this in a
big televised press conference, and then he resigned.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
This is just so fascinating to me because literally all
of the pieces of Jerry Springer as we know him
and love him are coming together from televised chaos to
elaborate extramarital gotcha's do cheerful pleading on television.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
I just I can't get over this. Yeah, and this conference.
People still talk about this as a watershed moment because
he was at a low point, and he later said
of it on a newscast that he was doing to
be honest, the thought about ending at all crossed my mind,
but a more reasonable alternative seemed to be, Hey, how
about just leaving town, running away, starting life over someplace else.

(23:24):
But this conference that he had, he was so well
loved in the area, and this moment of candor and
vulnerability and whatever was so well received that he was
elected back to City Council, and then the city council
named him as mayor for a term for one year,
and he received the most votes for mayor of anyone

(23:45):
in Cincinnati history at that point. He won by the
biggest margin. Jerry Springer Cincinnati Mayor, biggest margin in the
town's history at that point. One of his comeback speeches
nodded to the prostitution controversy. The Cincinnati acquire had dragged
up one that said, a lot of you don't know
anything about me, but I'll tell you one thing you
do know. My credit is good. Hamilton County Democratic Chairman

(24:11):
Tim Burke, who is at the time Springer's legislative aid,
has a fascinating anecdote about how well this comeback went.
He said, some of the nuns out at the College
of Mount Saint Joseph started a thing where they were
sending stones and little pebbles to the other members of
Cincinnati City Council to encourage them to reject Springer's resignation,

(24:34):
with the message that he who is without sin should
cast the first stone.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
This will be the last time that nuns would come
to the defense of Cherry Springer. I'll do it, I'll, i'll,
I'll cast the first stone. I didn't give you love
casting stones? You got any stones to cast? Right now?

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Who got cast a stone? At?

Speaker 1 (24:52):
I get you a st I can caste.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Burke also remembered Springer's flair for the dramatic as a
polic titian. To Cincinnati dot Com, he once wrestled a
bear for charity, spent a night in jail known as
the Workhouse in Camp Washington to learn about the plight
of the prisoners there, and stole quote a bus and
drove it around the block at a press conference to
commemorate the city taking over bus service.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Politicians spending a night in jail such an old, tired,
seventies grand standing trick.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
That's like so many of them did that. My favorite
one is in Chicago when the mayor moved into Cabrini
Green and was like it's safe and then lasted like
two weeks.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
I didn't know that, was it.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Dick Daily, Uh no, Cabrini, Yeah, Mayor Jane Byrne three weeks.
I'm sorry, so she late. She lasted three weeks and
then dipped out. Though it was often reported that Springer
and his wife, Mickey Velton separated and eventually divorced in
nineteen ninety four, a rep was correcting this when he

(25:55):
died earlier this year, saying that the divorce had ever
gone through and they were still married. The couple had
a daughter, Katie, in nineteen seventy six. She was born
without nasal passages, interesting medical complication. She underwent immediate surgery
after her birth, and she's I believe, legally blind and
deaf in one ear. And then in two thousand and six,

(26:17):
Springer donated two hundred and thirty thousand dollars to the
Park School in Chicago, where she works as an assistant teacher,
and they constructed a high tech facility called Katie's Corner
for students with disabilities. So that's nice. Springer served just
a year as mayor due to an arrangement with a
local third party group at the time that limited the

(26:39):
amount of years he could serve during his time in office,
he had a regular commentary So I've no idea what
that means, don't ask me to elaborate. During his time
in office, he had a regular commentary slot on local
rock station WEBN called the Springer Memorandum, which you starting
to see the groundwork of his latter day career shift here.
And by nineteen eighty two, he decided to run for
governor of Ohio, but his opponents dredged up the prostitution scandal,

(27:03):
and despite continuing to address it in his own campaign,
ads with a candor that proved so successful before he
finished third for the Democratic nomination, putting his political career
in the review. After his political fortune sank, Jerry Springer
moved to TV. He was still popular enough to draw
an audience, and he joined the NBC affiliate WLWT, and

(27:24):
he turned out to be a natural as anchorman and
managing editor for the station's nightly news broadcast, the station
ascended to the top slot in the market.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
His reports ended with a nightly commentary sort of akin
to his future show's final thought, and that's where he
coined his famous sign off, take care of yourselves and
each other, and the show performed great in the ratings
and eventually earned him a total of seven local Emmys.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
The last, It's so funny, the last he would have
ever come within sniffing distance of an Emmy. I'm alst
surprised that he didn't win an Emmy for something weird
on like Jerry Springer Show. Later, I don't know what.
I think they started opening the show with like zero emmys,
zero respect, or something like that.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
He later said of his time as a newsman, I
wasn't even thinking about anchoring at the time. I was
just thinking, well, I'll get to do commentary, and then
all of a sudden it kind of got a life
of its own, and I enjoyed it. I always made
an excuse not to run for office again because I
enjoyed it. And he was sort of known for his stunts.
I mean, he was known for pulling stunts in office,
like we just said, spend the night in jail and

(28:28):
wrestling a bear and stealing a bus, and he performed
similar stunts, well slightly less illegal stunts on WLWT. He
performed on stage in nineteen eighty five and Broadways Damn Yankees.
He joined the Cincinnati Reds baseball training camp for a
report in nineteen eighty eight, and he covered various games
and which Cincinnati teams figured, including.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
The nineteen eighty nine Super Bowl in.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Miami, and capitalizing on Jerry Springer's popularity as an anchor
and commentator, in nineteen ninety he attempted his own public
affairs show on the network wl WT, and in nineteen
ninety nine, Multimedia Entertainment bought the show for broadcasts and
it's four television networks, and for many in the Midwest
news world, it seemed like Multimedia Entertainment was trying to

(29:12):
position Jerry as the heir apparent to the jewel of
their Midwest talk show, stable Phil Donna Hue.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Did you ever watch Phil donnahu much? He wasn't really available.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
I was, yeah, ye, a little before our time, and
I don't think really aired where I was. Multimedia This
company launched Donahue in nineteen seventy and continue to expand
its lineup. They're the folks behind the Sally Jesse Raphael
Show in nineteen.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Eighty three out of Saint Louis, and also Jerry Springers
in nineteen ninety one, which I believe premiered in Cincinnati.
NBC then purchased Jerry's show for its owned and operated stations,
and the next year Springer moved production to NBC's tower
in Chicago. It's fun to he's such a Midwest guy.
I don't know why. It's just it's so bizarre. He
was born in London and lived in New York City.

(29:56):
I know from the For the first few years upon
him his show is on, Springer did serious Donahue like stuff.
I mean, he interviewed disgraced Iran contra Ghoul, Allie North,
the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He discussed issues like homelessness, the
AIDS crisis, domestic violence, race and equality. He also did

(30:16):
feature other less or perhaps more distinguished guest stars from
time to time, like Shockpunk Gigi Allen and Gwar Pride
of Richmond, Virginia Gwar Baby. Even after his show moved
to Chicago for its second season, Springer continued to commute
home nightly to anchor his old evening news slot with
his longtime co anchor, Norma Rashid, though after their ratings

(30:38):
fell from first to third, he quit Channel five in
nineteen ninety three to do full time daytime TV, which, Yeah,
you sure love news until you weren't winning at it anymore,
and then he went to the other thing.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
That's like a five hour drive between Chicago and Cincinnati. Damn,
I guess he flew, but flying every night, Hugh.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
The move may have been a mistake because by April
nineteen ninety four, the ratings for his show were so
bad that Multimedia threatened to cancel him if ratings didn't
improve by that November, and that led to a major
overhaul of the creative team. The original executive producer, Terry
Weibel Murphy was replaced by Richard Dominick.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, this creative overhaul, I imagine involved catering to the
lowest of the lowest common denominators.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Hey, Richard Dominick is an interesting guy. He began his
career in theater and comedy and then moved on to
the tabloids. He wrote for the very famous Weekly World News.
Some of his biggest hits were things like Howdy Doody
Dummy comes alive and saves drowning man and he is
currently You can see his an interview about a toaster

(31:47):
possessed by the Devil on YouTube if you so choose.
He wasn't a stranger to television either. His tabloid work
earned him a number of appearances on Dave Letterman Show.
By the time he went to Springer, Dominick were called
to A and E that the first responsible iteration of
Springer's show never really took off. It never was exciting.
I hate to say it was dull, but it probably was.

(32:08):
The La Times sniffed into contemporaneous review that Springer's first
show was oppressively self important and starring as Cincinnati news
anchorman and former mayor talk about coastal elitism. So Jerry
and I took a walk around Chicago, Dominic told the
Seattle Times in nineteen ninety eight. We said, hey, let's

(32:28):
be outrageous, and at the time I said to producers,
don't bring it to me. If it's not interesting with
the sound off. That's your approach to porn, isn't it.
He added to eighty years later, we decided we were
going to go after what I like to call the
Letterman crowd, because there was nobody doing a show for
college kids. But a much more telling quote he gave

(32:51):
to the BBC when he was asked to defend Springer,
if I could kill someone on television, I would as
you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more
too much information after these messages. So by December of

(33:20):
nineteen ninety four, the tide had begun to turn. The
show was featuring topics like my boyfriend turned out to
be a girl and I want my man to stop
watching porn, as well as a show that investigated the
relative merits of large versus small breasts. A nineteen ninety
five episode featured a young man named Raymond, whose Springer

(33:41):
was helping to lose his virginity. Springer offered him, I
guess I put that in quotes. I should put that
in quotes. I don't know, it's horrifying, offered him five
young women hidden by a screen that he could choose from.
Raymond had a friend named Woody with him, and an
on screen graphic. Then told viewers wood he doesn't know it,

(34:02):
but his eighteen year old virgin sister is one of
the contestants.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
There's no way, this is no way.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
I know.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
That's not like the first reaction I should have to
what you just said.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Well, Springer put the most responsible spin on this change
that he could, or my personal theory is that he
just had nuclear grade justification powers, He wrote in his
nineteen ninety eight biography Ringmaster, it was time to listen
to the public, to show another side of life rarely
if ever, seen on television. As he put it at

(34:38):
the end of a twenty fifteen episode, his show focused
on regular folks of no fame, little if any wealth,
and very little influence. Folks just taking a moment which
they rarely if ever get to let the world know
something about what they are thinking or feeling or doing.
What a world class bull artist. I'm sorry, Well, what

(35:00):
do you expect.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
It's Jerry Springer And I didn't even know before we
started this.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
I didn't even know he hit a background in politics,
of course. I mean that's the thing that bothers me,
is like I don't just don't think he was that
bothered by I mean, you know, he's a complex People
are complex. People can feel two things that he but
like all this justification and then having the horse fire
and then like all the shit that he had on there,

(35:25):
and like, you know, it wasn't it wasn't sixty minutes.
It wasn't Charlie Rose like the show is mean and
like and as much as he would like furrow his
brow and and you know, do some introduction to creative
nonfiction pandering at the end of episode with his little
monologues like the show is mean and it was not

(35:47):
responsible and if I read a lot of interviews with
him for this, and he just had this say, he's like, oh,
it's chewing gum. And I just don't know that people
really ever pushed him in being were like shut the shop,
what's wrong with you? Whatever, whatever, whatever, It doesn't matter.
In my position as the resident optimist on the show,

(36:07):
there was at least a somewhat laudable aspect to a
very small portion of this. Many of Springer's LGBTQ.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Guests were actually the very first exposure that mainstream Americans
had to queer culture. For example, in nineteen ninety five,
there were two performances by Comedy Central transgender star Jade
Esteban Estrata, and in twenty fourteen, after finding out the
trans community was upset by Jerry's use of the of
a slur, I'm going to say it of a slur

(36:35):
that he used on the show. He struck it from
the broadcast, telling TMZ, I didn't know it was offensive
to them, and I'm not interested in offending people, so
obviously I'll just change the term. There's no argument there.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, I mean it's nice. I guess. Someone also tweeted
when he died that they as a project like as
some kind of I don't know why you embark on
this project. But they were attempting to catalog all of
the homophobic language that appeared on the shows like Chiron's,
the scrolling text and graphics and introductions, and they gave
up because it was just too much for them. That's

(37:08):
what I mean, Like I have oh yeah, you know,
he has this justification where he's talking like he's you know,
Walter Crunkite, which I probably saw saw himself as in
some horrifying real self delusionment. But it was just like
that show. It was it was. It was nasty, yeah,
you know. The slide towards the new moral lows and

(37:29):
new rating size, though, was a fast one.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Episodes like Kung Fu Hillbilly and I'm Happy I cut
off my legs. That's so tough because that's like a
legitimate medical condition. And this woman like went to a
bunch of doctors and was like, please amputate my legs
and they were like no, and she did it herself,
like what what. Nineteen ninety five episodes saw Springer get

(37:58):
into a fraud moment with an outwardly and virulently anti
Semitic priest, telling him I don't hate you, I feel
sorry for you. Then the priest got into a Holocaust
denial rant, and Springer told him to shut your face,
and the guy jumped out of his chair. It was
the most Springer ever got involved in any of the
in any of the shows. He reflected on the challenges

(38:20):
of filming that episode too People Magazine in twenty nineteen
said I'm supposed to be able to handle all the
outrageous things, but I put my finger in his face
and yelled at him. Suddenly he stood up, and he
was a big guy. I was like, oh, this was
not a good idea. Thankfully security got him on the ground.
There was also a notorious nineteen ninety seven episode called Clanfrontation,

(38:41):
in which Springer moderated a conversation between members of the
Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defense League, which devolved
into a brawl. And then another memorable episode featured Lady
Ice Queen and Princess a mother daughter Dominatrix duo. Do
I want to know what that was about? I didn't,

(39:03):
you know, I didn't watch very many of these. I
was going to go and pull a bunch of clips
that we could that we could punch in, but descriptions
alone seemed they paint a picture I didn't. I didn't
feel like staring that far into the ABYSS.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
One KKK themed episode, Presumably A penny in nineteen ninety
four gave the Jerry Springer Show its longtime head of security,
Steve Wilkos, Chicago cop and former marine. He later told
Media Week the pay was good, and I figured it
was just a one time gig. But I ended up
doing another show and another, and before I knew it,
I was hired as the full time director of security.

(39:42):
So I left my career as a cop to give
this a shot, and what goes would eventually sub in
for Jerry while he was on Dancing with the Stars
and even anchor his.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Own eponymous show in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Imagine it disappointed you would be if you made it
all the way to get on Jerry Springer's show and
Jerry's not there and you got Steve as the guy
behind the mic.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
I'd be bummed. Yeah, yeah, I'd feel cheated, but you know,
people just really wanted to be to be on. Speaking
of security, quite a number of now prominent professional sports
figures have appeared on Springer's show as security hockey vets
like Joe Krvo and Adam Burrish to e C welterweight

(40:22):
champion Shony Carter and two separate UFC heavyweight champs, Andre
Rolovsky and Boss Rutin. Boss ruton Is has a hilarious
bar fighting Tips instructional DVD where he talks in his
like Dutch inflected English about like you always want to
if you're talking to someone you think you're gonna get

(40:43):
in a fight in you want to hold your hand
up to your chin and sort of nod at them
thoughtfully so then you can be in position to deliver
headbut out of nothing. As he says, he's like demonstrating
like punching combos, and he's like, dang, get it, dang,
get it, dang.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
I'm sort of surprised if you have your hand up
by jin you're already ready just to deliver a punch.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Though, well he has he has another thing. There's a
great setup for his like, sir, you're telling me this
about my wife. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to
break your leg. It's great. I encourage everyone to look
it up to go like Boss Rutin's, like street fighting
or something. In nineteen ninety five, Springer spoke to Annabel Chong,

(41:25):
twenty two year old porn actress who took part in
the World's Biggest Gang Bang recording two hundred and fifty
one sex acts for a film and world record of
the same name. And then this became a running bit
on the show. They just kept having different porn actresses
on there who were either going to or had just
break this record. Chong spoke of the experience as an

(41:48):
empowering reversal gender norms, eventually just equipping to Jerry why
not because it was there now a programmer. Though Annabout
Chung's record was broken by Jasmine Saint Clair, who also
went on to Springer to discuss it. I believe her

(42:08):
number was three hundred. Oh my god, now I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop you. It's it's not all
different guys. No I know or I don't know, but
I assume it's multiple sex x with a lower than
number lower than three hundred guys. Okay, my question, I mean,

(42:32):
how long did that take? Twenty four hours? That's the
conditions of the record.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Oh, I don't recall that being outlined and.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
And get it and you're in the mail of the
sent you they didn't write that out for you in
uh more innocuous. There was the nineteen ninety six appearance
of Zach the seventy pound baby Strenger. He was diagnosed
with something called Simpson Galabi Bemel syndrome, which causes overgrowth,
and his dad, who was on the show with him
talking about having to buy adult diapers for his son,

(43:08):
said wouldn't change him for the world. And then Straker
would return to the show as an adult, saying that
he was happy and now working as a competitive gamer.
Was he still like huge? You know? I don't know. Oh,
and I'm looking at okay.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
On LADBible dot Com, seventy Pounds Baby reunited with Jerry
Springer twenty years later. Let's take a look. He's a
large man. I wouldn't I wouldn't have looking at him.
I wouldn't have guessed that he was seventy pounds as
a baby.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
But yeah, probably evens out. You know, that would be
my that would be my bet less Whimsically, the show
explored the plight of Earl Z in nineteen eighty seven,
who cut off his own genitals with garden shears because
he was being stalked by man he knew I have
one step ahead of you. I found the ap article

(44:00):
from May eighth of nineteen ninety seven. He initially claimed
that someone else did it, someone broke into his house
and cut his dick off with garden shears. Would you
hate that? Well, there's a truly spectacular quote in this
AP article. Fulton District County Attorney Polly hoy said he

(44:22):
would only be charged with falsely reporting an incident, adding
it's not against the law to remove your own penis.
Spring Equipped wouldn't have just been easier to change your
phone number.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I mean, stuff like this makes me think that Jerry
Springer's show is scripted in the same way that like
Hollywood Square is a scripted all like the quips and one
minors that the celebrities get are like written well in
advanced by writers and they have on an index card.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
It just feels very like, I don't know either. Prep
time for this was shockingly low. I mean they were
getting especially for getting five thousand calls a week at
their peak from potential guests. Producer Richard Dominic had a
production staff. Their job is to find the angriest callers.
Each guest is briefed on what the topic is going

(45:10):
to be, and then they're given a list of basically
ten to twenty possible outcomes of what the situation could be, Like,
we're gonna put you in this situation with your horse,
and here's what could maybe happen with your horse. I
want you to be prepared for this. But that didn't
always pan out.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
I mean, I've read that viewers would call in this
number at the end of the show and the producers
would listen, and if the story sounded real or at
least very juicy, they would fly these people out the
same day to the studio and put them up at
a fancy hotel. And they did it that quickly because
they went to ensure that these people didn't have a
chance to think things through or change their mind before

(45:51):
shaping the episode the next day.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah. Yeah, that tracks the year nineteen ninety eight eight
ninety eight. All of these section headers were formatted in
the Jerry Chant Rhythm the year nineteen ninety eight is
an important moment in Springer history. After initially being told
by Multimedia Entertainment to tone down what was happening, the
show was then bought by Universal, which pushed Springer, Dominic

(46:16):
and the staff to do what they wanted, and things
really got crazy. There was the now banned nineteen ninety
eight episode I Married a Horse, in which Springer interviewed
three people in what they called interspecies relationships, including a
Missouri man named Mark, who claimed he'd been on a
forty year crusade to be accepted for his love of

(46:36):
a pony named Pixel. The real kicker to this is that,
over the course of his interview, he reveals that he's
slowly dying from hepatitis that he had contracted from the
love that dares not speak its name. And this is
this episode. Didn't we already do a bit on Niro?

(46:58):
Oh we sure? No, No, that's uh Catherine the Great
you're thinking of yes near and you're at a horse
thing too? Right? Oh? Did he he nominated his horse
for Roman Council? I think, But that was that was
a mentorship situation that wasn't sexual. Well, He just wanted
the horse to succeed. I really believed in that horse. Yeah. Uh,

(47:20):
that episode was banned in a bunch of markets. You
could get it on the Jerry Springer Too Hot for
TV compilation, which itself was a bestseller. Yeah, you have
a you have a favorite one here though? Who you add?
You added add a lot idea on this idea? You're excited.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
He talked to me about atypical sexual relationships, and I
got stuff to say.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
What can I say?

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Uh, let's not forget about Erica Eifel, who is an
American competitive archer who married the Eiffel Tower and commitment
ceremony in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Have you heard about that? You heard about this? I
can't do it like this, have you no? No? Eric
Eifel became the founder of os Internationale, an organization for
those who developed significant relationships with inanimate objects. This was
not the first time she developed a non platonic relationship

(48:16):
with an inanimate object. She claimed that her relationship with
her competition bo whom she named Lance, helped her become
a world class archer, and she lost all of her
sponsorships when she admitted this.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
She's quoted US saying, quote, I feel in innate connection
to objects. It comes perfectly normal to us to connect
on various levels emotional, spiritual, and also physical. For some,
this inspired a two thousand and eight documentary called Married
to the Eiffel Tower, and in a twenty fifteen interview
with Vice Erica Eifel had.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
This to say, of course it was revise.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
I know, I understand that people are going to get
visuals in their head and they're going to have questions
about sex. When you see a building in a person,
you have questions, just like when you see a very
tall person and a very short person together, you wonder
how the mechanics work, But you wouldn't go up to
those people and ask how do you do it when

(49:11):
you're so tall and she's so short. The fact that
people ask us, meaning me and the Eiffel Tower, those
questions just shows how little they respect us. And in
one scene in this documentary, which is on YouTube and
is fascinating, Erica is seen straddling one of the iron

(49:34):
girders of the tower with a look of what has
been described in print as euphoria on her face. The
scene then cuts to a shot of Erica pulling her
stalking back on insinuating that she has just consummated her
relationship with a tower.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
This did not sit well with French authorities, who she
claimed wanted nothing to do with me. It was a
classic case of starcross lovers and she felt torn away
from her beloved Eiffel Tower.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
She said, I don't even know how to articulate a
heartbreak like that. It just wrecked me. It was the
final blow and I just had to withdraw. So she
retreated into the arms of another lover, although in this
case the arms were bricks and the lover was the
Berlin Wall. I was gonna say, who does she rebound with?

Speaker 1 (50:19):
She rebounded with the Berlin Wall.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Her quote device the Berlin Wall picked me up off
my feet.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
It was an object that was hated for being who
he is in the nineteen eighties. I felt empathy for him.
He can't help where he was built. They focused their
hatred on the wall rather than the politics behind it.
I felt like I was suffering in the same way.
I went through a lot of rejection when I was
younger because of my orientation. She enjoyed question mark was

(50:49):
one enjoy I guess. She seemed to enjoy a twenty
year relationship with the Berlin Wall, which inspired a musical
theater production called Erica's Wall. Not the last time We'll
talk about an unwork the Dox musical theater production.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
In this episode, she has also fallen in love with
fighter jets elements of fencing. I mean, you get the
fighter jets thing. I mean, yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
And as of twenty fifteen, she was in a relationship
with a crane, the crane that she uses to do
her job in construction.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
There's come on, there's there's ajar, there's har regulations about that.
You got to report closer.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah, yeah, and what is a truly tremendous pool. Quote
from the Vice story from twenty fifteen, Erica Eifel says,
people think I can just point out an object and
decide to love it. They think I can't develop relationships
with people. So I choose objects so I can have control.
But I have no control over my relationship to the
Eiffel Tower. If this was all about control, I'd love

(51:46):
my toaster, you know. In twenty ten, a clinical sexologist
named doctor Amy Marsh wrote in the Electronic Journal of
Human Sexuality that while it's often assumed that OS, or
object sexual I think it's what it's called, is a
pathology or related to a history of sexual trauma. Doctor
Marsh says there is in fact no data to support

(52:08):
such a claim, and that OS appears to be a genuine,
though rare, sexual orientation and pervice. Playwright Chloe Mascheter interviewed
eight objectim sexuals is how they identify themselves to write
a play called object Love, and she interviewed people who'd
fallen in love with cars, bridges, and my personal favorite,

(52:29):
even the folding armrest of a desk chair. She said,
there's an english woman who's in a relationship with the
statue of Liberty who also has a human boyfriend, but
he seems very supportive. I don't recall if any of
these people ever appeared on Jerry Springer.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
But I would not be surprised. I'm really shocked that
you'd never heard of this of object sexuality. No, No,
it's the scale of it that really gets to me.
What's it? How could you do it? No?

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Literally, how could you do it? The marquets of it?

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Her mind poggling, Well, just like what what like? You know,
obviously we've talked about uh, queen drummer Roger Taylor wanting
to his car. I love my car. Yeah so, but
would the car be too small for the Eiffel lover?
Good questions? Good question? Ah, is that then sizest of her?

(53:25):
If she's not attracted to cars but instead goes for trains,
would we call her a size queen? I just don't know.
Is a car a short king in this case? Possibly?
I got I What were we talking about again, Cherry Springer?
Oh yeah right, okay, Well it was hard to argue

(53:46):
with results, but someone were the results. The results were
that by nineteen ninety eight, about six point seven million
viewers were watching The Jerry Springer Show every day, with
The Washington Post dubbing Springer the King of the trash Heap.
By nineteen ninety nine, Springer had become the first daytime

(54:08):
TV talk show to beat Oprah in the ratings in
a decade. He toppled a decade long run by Oprah,
but despite that, advertisers were still wary of the show.
This is really interesting statistic. The New York Times reported
that during the time that The Jerry Springer Show was
beating Oprah Winfrey in that number one spot, the cost

(54:30):
of a thirty second advertisement during Springer was less than
a third of the cost of a thirty second spot
during Oprah, so that is just a bargain. And Oprah
admitted in a nineteen ninety nine interview with The Sunday
Times of London that what she was seeing from the
quote vulgarity circus a Springer's show made her consider leaving

(54:51):
her own program altogether. That's power, yeah, to make Oprah
question her life choices. Jerry Springer responded in The New
York Post Oprah had The Sunday Times of London. Cherry
Springer had The New York Post saying that he loved
Oprah Winfrey and that his mom didn't like his own
show either, and he didn't blame either one of them.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
And as producer Richard Dominic said to ABC at one point,
if you're looking to save the whales, call Oprah.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
If you're sleeping with a whale, call us. Here it is.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more. Too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
The authorities quickly took notice of this, and Springer became
an easy explanation figurehead scapegoat for all of society's ills
re television. Bob Iger, then chairman of ABC, dubbed it
an embarrassment to the television industry, and then US Senator
Joe Lieberman, alongside Education Secretary William Bennett, implored stations to

(56:05):
stop airing The Jerry Springer Show in a speech at
the National Association of Broadcasters convention in nineteen ninety eight.
The brawls that the show frequently devolved into became a
problem as well. Pressured by Chicago religious groups, the chairman
and chief executive of Springer's parent company told the La
Times in May of nineteen ninety eight, we are getting
out of the fighting business.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
The show will not be a boxing match. I also
love the quote from another studio executive. We don't want
to take away.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
From the show.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
We just think that Jerry will be able to do
it in a different way. It will still be confrontational,
It'll still be unpredictable. You will sense the conflict. You
will still see yelling and screaming, but we're not going
to show anyone getting hit.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Cue the boo and hissing. Yeah. Ratings plummeted and they
reversed course in two months. By July that year, the
fights were back and the show was back in the
number one slot.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
My favorite chiron ever was Violets are read, guests are
black and blue. I mean, I have something to sad this.
I mean, I agree this is all deeply offensive and
troubling and problematic and all those things. I think of
Jerry Springer as a symptom and not a cause. You
said earlier that it was used as a scapegoat for
all of society's ills. You prefaced it by saying in

(57:18):
terms of television. But I think it is more of
a reflection of what people are. And I, despite my
being the optimist on this show, I think maybe this
gives away my inherent view of humanity. That's you know,
what is the Hobbes?

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Who is it?

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Nasty and brutish Hobbs?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah, Thomas hobbson Life is nasty, brutish and shortness. Yeah.
I mean, it's just a it's just a question of
like why is this the I don't know, I don't
know why I'm offended by it. I guess it's just like,
oh I am too, but I well, I guess just
like it's it's at this point, you know, having grown

(58:02):
up with both this and the Internet and like social
media and like just a couple of weeks ago, Elon
musk up Twitter to the point where you could see
animal cruelty videos in your feed without any moderation and
like you know, getting sent to like like it's all
a gestalt image of like the nightmare of American life. Right,

(58:25):
But why did this show have to put it into
sixth gear? You know, like why did we just have to?
It was just like it's not that like, oh well,
just hold up a mirror to societies blah blah blah.
It beat Oprah. It's like they clawed. They they truly
you know, they saw their opening and they went for
it and capitalized on it and they all got rich

(58:47):
off of it, and like, I don't know, there's just
such a gross, like atavistic It really is like the worst.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, it's one of the most American stories I think
we've talked about on here.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
It's finding out what people their base level desires in
giving it to them and making a ton of money
off of it, regardless of any kind of accountability or
responsibility or outcome. It's interesting, I mean, it's it's horrifying.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
I mean in a way it's strange that this is
twenty five years ago because it does feel very current.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, well that's what I'm saying. I mean, like you
you know, this this show was like undone by reality
TV and social media and YouTube and you know, four
chan and like everything, like you didn't need Springer all
of a sudden, but like same stuff that brought down
Jackass in a lot of ways too. It's like suddenly
you have stupid stuff you can watch on YouTube whenever
you want. Yeah, but I mean it's just it again.

(59:44):
I don't know why it like if like on the
you know there we were on the Road to Hell
and they put a brick on the gas pedal, you know,
like there's your pool quote. And I think it's important
to kind of not to join the pro clutching vergame
because you know, I'll get all these Republicans are well
Jim Leemeran was a Democrat, right, all these but all

(01:00:05):
these people were like, you know, oh, we should step in,
and well it's a horrible thing to have on television.
It's like, well, let the free market decide. You know,
the free market did decide, but yeah, man, it's just
it's just horrifying and it and it is like so
much of it is just a hideous precursor to like
the way I mean, like what is Twitter if not

(01:00:28):
a Jerry Springer brawl, only less moderated, you know, Oh,
I mean it's I can't articulate on it. I'm just
so it's just so, it's like worrying a tooth. And
I don't get puritanical about this kind of like I
don't care about em and m I didn't you know,
Marilyn Manson is a sex predator, but I didn't care

(01:00:48):
about his music. I just like, I think it's the
it's the two it's the two facedness of it that
bothers me. It's like it's just him like putting up
his hands and being like, I'm just a guy with
a show and we were all the same underneath. And
I'm like, no, you're worth sixty million bucks, like you
didn't have you never had a real job. You went
into politics, You've never had a real job, Like you

(01:01:11):
contributed nothing to the world, like since at least the
early seventies, Like, get off your high horse. That's what
it's the it's the hip hob At least this guy,
Richard Dominick was like, yeah, I'd kill someone on TV.
Like that's the kind of clarity that you want from
the moral purity you want from someone in television. In
nineteen ninety nine, Chicago City Council even convened to hearing

(01:01:33):
about Springer's show, suggesting that guests could be arrested for
the acts of violence they committed on air. Alderman ed
Burke expressed concern that the off duty Chicago police officers
serving in security guards with the program failed to pursue
actual legal ramification for the brawls there were, allegedly those
standards in place. Audiences were not allowed to yell anything

(01:01:53):
that might encourage more violence. Male on female violence wasn't allowed,
and Springer claimed to have always offered women the opportunity
unity to press charges.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
One editorial in The New York Times in April nineteen
ninety eight claimed that, on average, each episode of The
Jerry Springer Show had about eighty five to one hundred
and thirty bleeps and between five and twelve fights. With
numbers like that, it's no surprise that Jerry Springer was
constantly being asked if the fights were in fact real
or if it was staged like wrestling A BBC report

(01:02:24):
from nineteen ninety eight concluded that sixteen former guests on
the show say they were coached on who to hit
during their appearance, and the same report quoted various publications
as featuring the detail that the show had quote a
fight quota for each program. One former guest on The
Jerry Springer Show told supposedly told extra, we acted everything.

(01:02:44):
When you have to do this, when you have to punch,
when you have to push. They wanted us to wrestle
and throw each other around. They said, we want four fights.
In nineteen ninety eight, Rolling Stone captured a pre filming
moment backstage between producer Melinda Chit and a guest who
had just told her I will take my damn shoe
off and put my sock in her mouth, to which
Chate responded, that's what you're gonna do. Do it fast

(01:03:05):
because security will try and stop you. So you know,
the point is moving objects, moving objects, or we get
the attention of the audience, Get up out of your chair,
move around.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
I'm not telling you to slug anybody. You know that
for a fact. I don't tell you to slug anybody.
I just love that This guy was like I will
put my sock in her mouth for somebody who seems
to be in the heat of the moment. That's a
very specific thing they want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
This unnamed man then, for some reason in this Rolling

(01:03:34):
Stone profile, he brings up a woman that he knew
who committed suicide, and Chate interrupts him and says, Nope,
you're not gonna talk about suicide. I don't like suicides
on my show. We're not going to talk about that period.
If you bring that up, I'll stop the taping. I'm
not kidding. So lines drawn as for whether or not
guests made up or otherwise fake their stories. That was
a persistent rumor that dogged the show for its entire history.

(01:03:56):
It was a vice contributor in twenty fifteen named Harmon
Leon who tried to test the show's vetting process by
claiming that he had a meth addicted boyfriend who is
having too much anonymous sex on Grinder and reporting back
that when he caught into the show about this, a
producer asked him to spice up the story by recruiting
someone to lie and pose is one of these anonymous lovers,

(01:04:16):
and then on the phone the producer just started chanting Jerry, Jerry, Jerry,
which is exactly exactly how I thought that would go.
Do they get paid people on the show? A producers? No,
the people on the show, because that adds a whole
It's just it's just the travel. It's just the travel, Okay,

(01:04:36):
all right. I was gonna say, if they actually paid
these people, then that adds a whole other sad level
of people being desperate and saying and doing whatever to
get it. Okay, Yeah, well uh. There was one famous
case of Springer being fooled though. There was a couple
of Canadian stand up comics. Ian Sirota is one of
them who's given an interview about it, and he and

(01:04:58):
three buddies responded to request from the show seeking someone
who had slept with their babysitter. Canadian viewers recognized them,
the whole thing was outed as a hoax, and then
Springer sued them each for fifty grand to cover production
costs and presumably make an example out of them. This
was settled out of court for ten dollars, which they
mailed to the show in change.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Well, ratings are not Barry Diller, who at the time
was the chief of Studios, USA, company behind Jerry Springer Show,
kept needling Jerry about the controversies, and so word began
to spread that Springer might be looking to exit his deal.
By the time his contract was up in the year
two thousand, budd he re up with them for oh
my god, thirty million dollars. Thirty million dollars, and the

(01:05:43):
hits just kept on coming. There was a food fetishist
named spam Man.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
There was a week on spring Watch that clip, No,
it's bad, I want to talk about it. No, just don't,
just don't do it. It's it's it's people in a
children's pool filled with food and the food is on them.
It's I don't know, Hunger is a real problem in

(01:06:08):
this country. Yeah, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
There was a week of Springer Break where shows were
taped at Jamaica's Hedonism Club, and there was also a
segment called three Pigs in a Trailer, which featured three obese,
shirtless men gorging themselves on junk food in as you
may have guessed, a trailer. By two thousand and two,
TV guys editors put the Jerry Springer Show a top
of their list of the fifty worst TV shows.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Of all time. Wonder Number two was I believe they
also started using their that and their intros. I don't know.
Check that out, check that list out? So what else
we got? All right?

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
TV Guys Fifty Word Shows of All Time? Number one
Jerry Springer, Number two.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
My Mother the car.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
That makes a certain amount of sense. That's the Yeah,
it's a mid sixties show. The premise features a man
whose deceased mother is reincarnated as an antique car who
communicates with them through the car radio.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Weird gross James L. Brooks wrote it, I think I
did know that. What's number three XFL Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
That was just more like people just didn't like it.
There's the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. No I want number five,
Hogan's Heroes. People love Hogan's heroes. It's no worse Gilligan's
Island Well.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Heroes, may it not? And may did na see a
lovable goon? Uh? Yeah? Good? Good point? Anything else any
other interesting takeaways from that?

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
The Chevy Chase Show, Baywatch number twenty one. Who wants
to Marry a Multimillionaire?

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Was that the fake one? Or that was Joe Millionaire? Yeah?
It was Joe Millionaire.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Homeboys in outer space. I am not familiar. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
We're ending this and now onto a lighter part of
the program Death. No, this is sad. Aside for all
the tut and garden variety industry mudslinging, there were actual
landmark cases of serial crimes committed in the daytime TV
talk show sphere that had ramifications for the entire industry.

(01:08:11):
The first one is actually not from Springer. It's from
an episode of The Jenny Jones Show. Years prior March sixth,
nineteen ninety five, Jenny Jones taped an episode called Revealing
Same Secret, Same Sex, Secret Crush Whatever, on which Scott Ahmanduray,
a gay man, confessed to an associate, Jonathan Schmitz, that
he had a crush on him. Schmids laughed about this

(01:08:32):
situation during the taping, but three days later he shot
and killed Ahmenduri. He's confessed to the killing and was
found guilty of second gree murder and in nineteen ninety nine,
the Amanduri family sued The Jenny Jones Show, the production company,
and Warner Brothers for the show's tactics. A jury awarded
them twenty nine point three million dollars in a settlement.

(01:08:53):
Remember that Jordan.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Jerry found himself in similar waters in the year two thousand,
when a married couple, Ralph and Eleanor Pannett, appeared on
an episode of a show called Secret Mistresses confronted with
mister Panits's ex wife, Nancy Campbell Panets, in which they
complained about Missus Campbell Panits's behavior and accused her of
stalking them. Hours after the show was broadcast, Nancy was

(01:09:15):
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. In August two thousand, Jerry Springer
appeared on CNN's Larry King Live to discuss the incident,
claiming that it quote had nothing to do with my show,
and eventually, in May two thousand and two, Panets was
convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

(01:09:36):
Shortly after, Nancy's family filed lawsuit against the Jerry Springer Show,
which was dropped at the top of two thousand and
three because if I was that a few months prior.
A Michigan appeals court throughout the jury awarded twenty nine
point three million in the Jenny Jones case, saying the
program had no legal duty to protect the guest who
had appeared on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
That's ghastly because there's no way that unless that dude
confessed to his coworker, he wouldn't have gotten murdered. And
there's he might not have done it had he not
been on the show. You know, like, I what, oh god,
what do you think about this? You're a lawyer, it's
pretty horrendous. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
I mean, I come on more than I come across
on this episode as the good cop. In terms of
Jerry Springer. I'm not defending any of this. I mean
it's a funny role reversal for the two of us.
I actually have a lower opinion of humanity than I
think you do, and you get all up in arms
about it, and I'm just like, yeah, what do you
expect people?

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
I guess that's yeah, which is which is unusual. This
wouldn't be the only suit that Springer was brought against
him over the show. In twenty nineteen, Springer was sued
by the family of Blake Alvi, who'd appeared in a
May twenty eighteen episode in which his fiancee told him
she had been unfaithful. That she was leaving him, and
that she had sold the engagement ring he had given her.
A few weeks later in June, I'll be shot himself.

(01:11:04):
I wasn't able to find out how this case ended.
Maybe I don't know if it's ongoing, but uh, yeah,
that seems like something that he was responsible for pretty directly. Yeah.
In nineteen nine of this thousand year old stare, you're
just like Yeah. In nineteen ninety nine, a fifteen year
old boy in Hollywood, Florida, was along with his brother,

(01:11:26):
convicted of sexually abusing their eight year old half sister,
allegedly telling police he watched a Springer episode about incest.
This presumably was a nineteen ninety eight segment called I'm
Pregnant by My Brother, focusing on a seventeen year old
named Heather, who said she was pregnant by her sixteen
year old younger brother and also in love with her
elder brother.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
How I forgot how truly grotesque this show was. I
take that a lot of the things I said earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
I was waiting to see how you'd respond once we
got into the murder and sexual abuse portion. That was
the only underage sex case spun from the show. Twenty
four year old wife and mother, don Marie Eves of Geneva,
New York, appeared on the show in nineteenninety eight to
confess that she had an affair with a sixteen year
old boy, for which she was charged and arrested.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Do we think that the show was more less or
equal in harm to Jackass in terms of just like
the destruction that it left in its thought?

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
Oh, man, I don't know. That's that's that's a tough one,
I think in psychic damage. Jerry did Moore. But man, wow,
good good question, good thought. Experiment well with his show
at the top of the televised heap, Springer was attaining
a new level of celebrity himself. In nineteen ninety seven,

(01:12:50):
he began a temporary job on Chicago's WMAQ as a
news commentator, and the anchor, Carol Marin, who had worked
at the station for nineteen years, refused to share airtime
with Springer and quit the show, of which he quipped,
I am sorry she found it necessary this week to
use me as the stepping stone to martyrdom. In solidarity

(01:13:10):
with Maren's decision, co anchor Ron Meger's departed A few
weeks later, dozens of people from religious and women's organization
protested the station's nighttime addition as well, and the heat
ended up being too much for the station, and they
dropped the Jerry Springer Show entirely in May of nineteenninety eight,
and then a Fox affiliate picked it up, and it
was so expensive for them that to cover the cost

(01:13:32):
of acquiring it, they had to broadcast it not once
but twice a day.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
And Jerry himself started popping up in TV cameos in
nineteen ninety six on shows as wide ranging as Roseanne
and The X Files. He nauched the Simpson's appearance and
similarly picked up roles on The Wayman's Brothers, Space Goes
Coast to Coast, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, and of course,
he played himself in Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me.
In nineteen ninety nine, Doctor Evil and his estrange son

(01:14:01):
Scott appear on Springer's show My Dad Is Evil at
Wants to take Over the World.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
I believe was the Chiron Yep, that was a good bit.
I remembered that. Yeah. In nineteen ninety eight, Springer reached
probably the height of his own ego, at least when
he partnered with producer Gary W. Goldstein for Ringmaster, a
barely veiled starring vehicle in which Springer plays Jerry fairly
because he did not have the rights to his own name.

(01:14:27):
Goldstein had actually been a fairly big named producer at
the time. He was attached to nineteen ninety's Pretty Woman
and nineteen ninety twos under Siege. This movie was written
by a guy named John Bernstein, who has literally only
other two writing credits on IMDb. It was directed by
Neil Abramson, who did some music videos before this and
doesn't seem to have done much else. And none of
this is a surprise, as the film was critically savaged

(01:14:49):
and didn't even make back half of its budget, But
it did co star Jamie Presley in an early role,
and I won Jerry Springer a Razzi for worst news Star.
I bet you he went to pick it up. You
think probably nineteen ninety eight was a bad year for
Jerry personally as well. Let me tell you that I
went down a bizarre rabbit hole researching this the world

(01:15:11):
of porn journalism. I found a guy purporting to be
one of the more famous porn journalists who interviewed this
porn star Kendra Jade and her stepmom, Kelly Well. She
interviewed Kelly Kelly Jade. These two women, along with another

(01:15:31):
porn producer and the UK tabloid News of the World,
conspired to tape Springer in a hotel room with Jade
using a hidden camera in the closet.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
They had appeared on the show before.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
I think it was there. This tryst was around the
third time that they were going to be on the
show before. In this interview, I found Kelly says that
on the previous appearance in the show, Kelly's actual mom
knocked one of her teeth out, and this was actually
big scandal that was kind of scrubbed because it was
largely the province of the tabloids at the time, like
the New York Daily News reported on it. Springer threatened

(01:16:07):
to sue them. He retained Marty Singer, who's one of
the top la like muckraking lawyers, to deal with it,
and he ultimately settled with this woman and her co
conspirators for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which she
would then in this interview alleged that the actually in
a few interviews, alleged that this guy who helped her
set it up stole from her, so she didn't even

(01:16:30):
get anything from it. It was he was supposed to be.
They supposedly said that they caught it having sex. Her
stepmom said in this interview that that didn't happen. She
only gave him a blowjob, So there's that. Springer blamed
the situation on the viagra that he had been taking,
saying it turned him into a sex addict, and ironically

(01:16:52):
he had been taking it to help patch up his
relationship with his wife, which well dry your own conclusions.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Pressure on Springer continued to mount, and on two thousand
and one, efforts by groups like the Parents' Television Council
and the American Family Association forced some advertisers to decrease
or stop their sponsorship altogether of his show, while in
My Beloved UK, the Independent Television Commission banned Jerry Springer
and other tabloid talk shows from being broadcast during daytime

(01:17:22):
hours on school holidays.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
In response to numerous parental complaints.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
One bright spot was that in two thousand and three,
Jerry Springer the Opera hit the stage Across the Pond,
sat in Hell and containing extensive profanity, along with at
one point a troop of tap dancing klu Klux Klan members,
and ran for six hundred and nine performances in London
from April two thousand and three to February two thousand
and five, before touring the UK in two thousand and

(01:17:48):
six and going on to win four Laurence Olivier Awards,
including Best New Musical.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
The opera, which included an estimated eight thousand obscenities, made
its North American debut at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas,
while it's New York City debut at Carnegie Hall.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Harvey Kaitel starred as Jerry.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
At Carnegie Hall Practice Practice Practice.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
Jerry himself made it to the West End in two
thousand and nine, singing and acting in the Cambridge Theater
production of the musical Chicago in the Billy Flynn role
played by Richard gear in the movie adaptation, I actually
saw that. I was studying abroad at the time, Yes,
in a screenwriting program, and we.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Went how did you make me get? How did you
make me get? Like eleven pages in I sort of
forgot that you saw him live on stage singing tap dance.
I kind of forgot about it till right now, I
sot I blocked it out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
I wonder I felt compelled to like take the good
cop roll. Yeah, you were like, well, you know, he
has a lovely voice. The opera was I don't understand
how this is possible. The opera was broadcast on BBC
two in January two thousand and five and sort of
predictably garnered fifty five thousand complaints and a number of

(01:19:10):
protests that various BBC offices. How could they broadcast the
show that had literally eight thousand obscenities in it. I
know it's England and like their obscenity laws are a
little different. But Jesus Springer himself incidentally saw the production
in Edinburgh in two thousand and two and dubbed it
quote wonderful, telling the Guardian that he quote didn't object
to anything in it and only wished he'd thought of

(01:19:31):
it first. That really tells you all you need to
know about Jeff Springer. Take us all, Figel and Ding.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
The glory days of Jerry Springer's show were coming to
a close. The Internet continued its expansion, and reality TV
became the dominant format for on screen garbage delivery to idiots. Sorry,
I watched her Inderpump Rules. I don't really have a
stand on here. Why it's it's the only one that
got its hooks in me. Really, yeah, I don't know.

(01:20:03):
I was watching Lowe was watching a bunch of it
during the early stage of the pandemic, and I just
gradually like a you know, your first your first taste
is free, and then I just gradually started coming back.
I mean explained, I'm not proud of it. No, No,
I'm curious because you're somebody who's taste is They're just yeah,

(01:20:25):
they're just it's the It's the only one I've I've
found that I can stomach, just because they're so transcendently awful.
It's it's cut. All that the show celebrated is three
thousandth episode in two thousand and six, a year that
they apparently also debuted a character named the Reverend Schnoor

(01:20:48):
No idea, what you're talking about. I didn't either. I
just found it and I had to put it in here.
This was a drunken womanizer character who was created by
the show's promotions director Brian Schnor and this guy had.
May come as no surprise to you, studied improv at
Chicago's Second Second City that two thousand and seven, Reverend

(01:21:10):
Schnor Merchandise was out selling the show's popular security Jerry
Springer Show security t shirts on its website. Just yeah,
I mean the mythology behind this show, the Lord Dippens Yes.
Also in two thousand and seven, the real crippling blow
is that security director Willcos left Jerry Springer to host

(01:21:31):
his own syndicated talk show, also shot at the NBC
Tower in Chicago and produced by Richard Dominic. Dominic, however,
would ultimately resign not long after the show's the main
shows eighteen season began. He launched the reality series Hardcore Pawn,
about a pawn shop on Detroit's semi famed eight Mile Road.
In twenty ten. I found a muckraking columnist named Robert

(01:21:54):
Fader from the Chicago Sun Times who was reporting on
Chicago TV scuttle, but that Dominic was fired because he'd
gotten in a physical confrontation with a guest and choked
this person. How much more of an appropriate departure from
the show that you hoped create could you get.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
In addition to his departure. Another crucial inflection point for
The Jerry Springer Show came in two thousand and nine
when the taping when the show recorded its last episode
at wmaqtv's NBC Tower in Chicago, where it had been
taped since nineteen ninety two. NBC had received tax credits
to move the production to Stamford, Connecticut, most famous to
me for being the place that Jim relocates in the

(01:22:33):
office along with Mary Povich and Springer's head of security,
Steve Wilcos's New show plus NBC Sports, Residents of this
Connecticut town protested Jerry's arrival, as one might expect. Sadly,
this relocation did not forestall all the show's eventual death.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
About a decade or so later.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
Trades reported that production on The Jerry Springer Show ceased
in twenty eighteen after ratings had dropped to about one
point seven million viewers per episode, which is down from
what I believe something like seven million in episode.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
It's crazy they contextualize that the report that I read
where they that was what That's what Rachel Ray was
getting at the time, though, So it's like it was
just how how far he had fallen and that they
couldn't justify paying him that much anymore. But it's not
like Stamford has a leg to stand on. They're the
home of the WWE, right, That's right. Like they were

(01:23:25):
just like, oh, that's the line we draw. You know,
we're fine with the steroid abusing you know, Nightmare Corporation.
We just don't, like, we're fine with Vince McMahon drawing
the line between Vince McMahon at Vince McMahon but not
Jerry Springer is hilarious hypocrisy. Shame on you, Stanford and.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
The final first run episode of The Jerry Springer Show
aired on July twenty sixth, twenty eighteen, though Springer spinoff
show judge Jerry, as well as security head Steve Wilco
spinoff both continued on afterwards. I feel like maybe I
just missed it. Not a big enough deal was made
that the Jerry Spurner Show was ending. I bet it
was just a lot of like good riddance pieces.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
Yeah yeah, I mean he had started a podcast since
twenty fifteen that ended last year, but he was like
he was a big podcast at the time. I mean,
he was he was diverse guy, he hosted America's Got
Talent for two seasons. He competed on Dancing with the
Stars so that he could learn how to dance for
his daughter's wedding. In his last interview ever, he said

(01:24:27):
his happiest moment on television was when she attended a
taping of Dancing with the Stars, So that's kind of nice.
And he cut a country record called Doctor Talk. It
was a big Meral Haggard fan. Apparently. Spryner also hosted
a liberal leaning radio talk show and mold a two
thousand and four run for the Ohio Senate. It's actually
kind of sad in that American This American Life podcast

(01:24:48):
episode about him. They did a lot of interviews with
him about the time and essentially what it was. Mike Ford,
who worked on this campaign with him, told This American
Life that it wasn't so much Jerry himself. That all
the people that they pulled had a with They just
said that it was the show, Like they all liked
him in his positions, but they were just like, he
has to quit the show. The show has to stop,

(01:25:08):
and he couldn't get out of his contract in time
to mount a campaign, so he dropped out of the
race in two thousand and three, after spending like a
year canvassing and doing all the pressing, the flesh and
all that shit, and he got like CBS News in
their report they talked about him like actually choking up
when he's saying like, essentially, I can't get out of

(01:25:29):
my show in time to do this, So clearly that
aided him, which I say good.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Springer's defense of his show ranged from the pretty bog
standard it's just silly minded entertainment, to the somewhat more
serious arguments that he was exposing mainstream America to representations
of itself not often seen on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
At the end of the day, it just seemed like
Jerry liked easy money. He was worth about sixty million
dollars by the time of his death. In fact, This
American Life's Alex Bloomberg pressed Jerry once before taping, saying,
here's a person who's at every stage of their professional
career been imbued with a sense of trying to make
a difference, and then you get to the Cherry Springer Show,

(01:26:09):
and Springer answered, well, we certainly made a difference in television.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
I'm not sure people are happy about it. I try
not to think about it too much. Life is what
it is. But I just don't spend too much time
worrying about that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
I do my show.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
I've always said it's a stupid show. I've had a
wonderful life because of it and all that, but I've
never for a second thought that it's important.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
It's trivial. It's chewing gum.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
And I recognize that once you do something that's significant
in life, all this other stuff is just a way
to eat. And He also told the BBC at one
point that he didn't actually watch his show, which I
think is very telling. Yeah, just kept cashing the checks.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
As he grew older, though, he seemed to reflect more
on the role that he'd played in shaping American culture.
He gave a widely publicized quote to a podcast in
twenty twenty two that had him half joking, I've ruined
the culture as an As an avowed liberal, he seemed
to detest Donald Trump, endorsed Hillary in twenty sixteen, and
took a lot of potshots at Trump was open about

(01:27:10):
the fact that the two essentially emerged from the same
section of the pop culture swamp. This is interesting, though,
because that remorse seems a little bit at odds with
a detail from the Rolling Stone profile I mentioned earlier
FM nineteen ninety eight, in which Springer ended a pre
taping meeting with production staff by proclaiming this show is
good for America. Another revealing anecdote from that profile comes

(01:27:33):
from WMAQ anchorman Ron Magers, who is one of the
ones who quit in protest when his station brought back
Springer on the news following his talk show. This guy
told Rolling Stone Jerry had been taping the show for
only a couple of months. I passed him in the
hall and we shook hands. He leaned forward as if
he was sharing a great secret, and he whispered, I

(01:27:55):
know I'm going to hell for this. I was quite
taken aback. Apparently Jerry wasn't out of what he was doing.
Maybe he is now, I don't know. At the start
of Jerry's twenty fifth season, he shared a message that
I would like to highlight. His takeaway from years of
doing the show was that deep down, we are all alike.
We all want to be happy. We cry when we're hurt,

(01:28:17):
we're angry when we've been mistreated, and to be liked,
accepted and respected not to mention loved is the greatest
gift of all. And then he emphasized that he never
thought he was better than any of the people on
his show, and he started to choke up when he
added only luckier or with fewer scruples and a lot

(01:28:38):
fewer horses. Folks, this has been too much information. I'm
Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Togg. Take care of yourselves.
Ask each other. Boom, Jerry, Jerry.

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalg.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg
and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and
the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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Host

Jordan Runtagh

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Jerry Springer Show: Everything You Didn't Know