The Jerry Springer Show
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Jerry Springer Show | |
|---|---|
 The current logo of the Jerry Springer Show |
|
| Genre | talkshow |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV), 720p (HDTV) |
| Running time | approx. 44 min (without adverts) |
| Creator(s) | Greg Klazura |
| Starring | Jerry Springer |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original channel | Syndication |
| Original run | September 20, 1991–present |
| Official website | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
The Jerry Springer Show (first aired September 20, 1991) is an internationally known television tabloid talk show, hosted by Jerry Springer, a former politician. It is videotaped at the NBC Tower studios of WMAQ-TV in Chicago and is distributed by NBC Universal, although it does not currently air on any NBC-owned stations. A popular show, it has aired during the morning and afternoon hours of many syndicated TV stations since the early 1990s.
The Jerry Springer Show is ostensibly a talk show where troubled or dysfunctional families come to discuss their problems before a studio audience so that the audience or host can offer suggestions on what can be done to resolve their situations. In actuality, the show has come to epitomize the so-called "trash TV talk show," as each episode of the show focuses on a lurid topic that usually involves sex, racism, marital jealousy, the Ku Klux Klan, and other prurient subjects. Typical topics of discussion on the show include unusual extra-marital affairs, vicious rivalries between families, rebellious and promiscuous teenagers, strippers and adult movie stars, and the like. Some of the strangest confessions include when a man admitted that he had married his horse, or a man who had a dedicated fetish for vomiting. The show proudly boasts that it was once voted the "Worst TV Show Ever" by TV Guide.
The "discussion" of each episode's subject usually involves an insult-laden verbal exchange between members of the studio audience and the featured "guests" on the show, who trade barbs throughout the length of the episode. Due to the emotional topics covered on the show, and the tendency of the crowd to encourage the guests, minor fights between guests are commonplace. As a result, the show has several security guards to break up fights, and the director of security, Steve Wilkos has become a fixture on the show. Each show usually features a series of several groups of people with problems organized along the same theme. After the individual segments, all the guests are brought together on stage for a question-and-answer session with the audience. The audience questions are generally insults towards the guests and the security staff occasionally has to keep the audience and guests from fighting. Springer wraps up each show with a moralizing sermon on the subject entitled "Final Thought," often finishing his speech with "Take care of yourselves and each other." In contrast to the chaos and absurdity exhibited by the guests, Springer's "final thought" is typically succinct and rational advice for the subject featured on the show.
Contents |
[edit] History
The Jerry Springer Show debuted on September 20, 1991, with fellow talk-show host Sally Jessy Raphael as its first guest. It started as a politically-oriented talk show, a longer version of the commentary Springer had gained local fame for giving as reporter and anchor. Guests early on included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson, and the topics included homelessness and gun politics. Low ratings led it to be picked up by a new producer. The search for higher ratings led Springer towards tawdry and provocative topics, becoming more and more successful as the show turned more and more lowbrow (although even then it successfully focused on more sensitive and less sensational issues). It became, through Springer's own admittance, a "freak show" where guests seek their 15 minutes of fame through discussion and demonstrations of deviant behavior. Its extraordinary success has led it to be broadcast in dozens of countries. The show gained so much popularity that for a while it was the number one daytime talk show in the United States.
By 1996 to early 1998, when the show reached its peak, the show was nonstop fighting between guests so after a FCC probe was done; for a while the fighting was taken off on the show. However, it came back by popular demands and lowering of ratings. Infact, while the show was being investigated in 1998, classic episodes from 1992 to 1994 were shown until it came back.
In 1999, the Chicago City Council suggested that if the fist fights and chair-throwing were real, then the guests should be arrested for committing acts of violence in the city. When asked whether the fights were genuine, Springer said, "They look real to me." He then criticized council members for not distinguishing between "violence on the streets of their city" and "rough-housing in our studios." Ultimately, the city council chose not to pursue the matter.
With the increasingly ridiculous nature of his guests' dilemmas (for example, stories such as "Daddy, will you marry me?"), some critics even thought the stories and the guests were unreal and created by the show to gain ratings. There was a story that circulated that they paid actors, but that was proven untrue. Springer swears on his life that all his guests are real. The authenticity of Springer's guests is still being brought into question to this day.
In reality, the show flies groups of guests in from around the country based on phone conversations after retrieving messages from the show's phone line, 1-800-96-JERRY. Guests are usually not paid for their appearances on the show, but they do receive complimentary meals and hotel accommodations. Strippers and midgets are sometimes called upon to be guests on the show, and instead of being paid, the businesses they work for are given free mention in the credits at the end of the show. During taping season, six shows are taped per week.
In its heyday (the late 1990s) the show was quite popular (and controversial), so much so that it caused contemporaries like Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, and Ricki Lake to "revamp" their own shows in order to improve ratings. Incidentally, the popularity of the "trash TV" talk shows led to a decline in the number of game shows that had traditionally been broadcast on weekday mornings and the E! show Talk Soup.
The show also had moments where they had and still have women expose breasts and other parts of the anatomy. Mostly, it is during fighting, but sometimes the topics on the show included stuff about stripping or prostitutes and the like. So on television the females were blurred out when they took off the t-shirts or had an upskirt or had something get ripped off. Sometimes, it was male guests who also took off their pants. Also the show tended to have women in audience sometimes come on stage and expose their breasts. So,in the late 90s, the Jerry Springer Show started releasing video tapes and later dvds including one called Too Hot For TV. It contained everything from unedited portions of the show to some of the best fights and guests. Since the show also sometimes bleeped bad words, the tapes contained the unedited versions full of cuss words.
The tapes went on to feature other popular stuff from the show such as when the KKK members would come one or when overweight people were interviewed by Jerry and stuff that never made air including a show that never aired, about a man who had sex with horses.
A major turning point of Springer's show was in 1993 when he invited notorious punk rocker GG Allin on the show. The entire episode can be viewed on youtube.com.
In 2000, Springer was given a 5 year, $30 million contract extension paying him $6 million per year.
Beginning in 2002, audience members were rewarded for flashing with a set of plastic beads commonly called "Jerry Beads." Around this time numerous sound effects were added such as a "fight bell", a cow mooing, a cash register dinging, a fart noise, a wrong answer buzzer sounding, a cricket chirping, a pig oinking, dinner bell chimes, a police car siren, a BOING!, and a baby crying.
In 2003 a stripper named Angie and a pole were added, however the stripper was dropped by the end of the season, replaced at the pole by audience members. This is notable in the show titled "Two Fat Men on a Pole."
Starting with the 2005 season, director of security Steve Wilkos has occasionally hosted the show claiming that Jerry is sick although the opening bit for these shows depicts Jerry with a pair of girls as part of an excuse for time away from his hosting duties. These shows usually feature Steve ripping lowdown men to shreds. Prior to 2005, Steve hosted special episodes which usually were retrospectives of the best segments from previous shows.
On January 16, 2006, it was announced that Springer signed a "multi year" contract with NBC Universal, renewing the show until at least the 2007-2008 syndicated season.
On May 12, 2006, Springer celebrated his shows 3,000th episode by throwing a party on the show, and showed many clips, including rare excerpts from the first episode.
[edit] The show in popular culture
- In an episode of Married with Children ("No Ma'am" - 1993 Season 8, Ep 9) Jerry Springer makes an appearance by playing himself and hosting an "episode" of the Jerry Springer Show, where he is bound and gagged by Al Bundy and his misogynistic friends. In the episode Springer is known as "Jerry Springer the Masculine Feminist."
- In an episode of Survivor ("The Big Lie" - 2003 Season 7,Ep 13) Contestant Jon Dalton commented in a confessional that his grandmother is home watching Jerry Springer after he lied to the the other players in the game claiming that his grandma had died.
- In a 1996 episode from the 9th and final season of Roseanne (entitled "What a Day for a Daydream"), recent lottery winner Roseanne daydreams and sees her and the family on an "episode" of The Jerry Springer Show. The segment includes all the typical chaos of most any real episode of the talk show, including Dan attempting to fight an audience member to defend his wife from being insulted.
- In the 1996 comedy The Cable Guy, Jim Carrey's character quotes one of Springer's "Final Thoughts."
- In a 1998 episode from season 4 of The Wayans Bros., Shawn and Marlon appear as guests on "The Jerry Springer Show," and the host surprises the brothers by airing some dirty laundry about their new girlfriend Jasmine.
- In 1998, Jerry Springer starred in a fictionalized version of the show in the movie Ringmaster, which flopped at the box office and with critics and Springer fans alike. It starred Jaime Pressley of My Name is Earl Fame.
- In 1999, the first of the three-episode series finale for Home Improvement aired. Tim Taylor (Tim Allen) mentioned that his show Tool Time, a show within Home Improvement in-which Tim hosted, had turned into a shock television Show "like Jerry Springer."
- In 1999, "Weird Al" Yankovic released his album Running With Scissors, which included the song "Jerry Springer," a parody of "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies. The song lists various outrageous people and acts watched on the show.
- The 1999 comedy Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me featured the show in its opening scene (the reunion of Dr. Evil and his son Scott) and closing credits (Scott's discovery that his mother is Frau Farbissina).
- In 2002, on the NBC soap opera Passions, in a storyline that seemed ripped from TJS, the character Eve feared that her daughter Whitney was having an affair with Chad, whom she believed was her son from a previous relationship at the time. Jerry Springer and his show would make a cameo appearance on Passions as The Larry Winger Show (the rights to the show's real name could not be secured), with Eve - in a dream sequence appearing as Jerry's guest and being heckled by his audience.
- In a Halloween-themed episode of The Simpsons, the family appear on the show upon discovering that an alien character is really the father of Maggie Simpson. Jerry Springer dies in this episode.
- The Canadian sketch comedy History Bites parodied the Jerry Springer Show in an episode called "Queen takes Queen, Checkmate" which centered around the rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.
- Springer parodied the "Final Thoughts" portion of his show in the VH1 series of specials I Love the 90s, appearing at the end of each year's segment to summarize the events that had taken place.
- In an episode of NBC's Most Outrageous TV Moments, a clip from the Jerry Springer Show was shown in which a guest called another a whore, spelling it "H O R E". Springer corrected her saying "On our show, there's a W there."
- Jerry Springer also made an appearance on an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. In the episode, Hilda and Zelda were arguing over a man, which prompted them to appear in a Springer-esque situation. When Hilda or Zelda spoke, it was permeated by various censored beeps. Sabrina then tells Jerry "But they're not swearing." To this he responded "Yeah, but this makes it sound like they are.", referencing the often exorbitant amount of profanity on the show.
[edit] See also
- Jerry Springer - The Opera - A British opera based on the show.
