Tag: Springer

Jerry Springer obituary

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For the better part of three decades, The Jerry Springer Show took the talkshow format into increasingly outlandish areas. Springer, who has died aged 79 of pancreatic cancer, presided over what amounted to a three-ring circus, as guests revealed a steady stream of betrayal in relationships they seemed to model on tawdry pulp novels and porn films.
This led to a cycle of what the writer David Sedaris described as “championship wrestling in street clothes … Curse, fight, disentangle. Curse, fight, disentangle … repeated with tedious precision”. Meanwhile, the studio audience would be pumping fists in the air, chanting “Jer-ee! Jer-ee!” while, just outside the fray, stood Springer, at once bemused by the antics and aghast at the way his guests treated each other.
Not just the ringmaster, Springer also tried to play the empathetic therapist, like Oprah Winfrey, but in a bar brawl. “The truth is, in most cases, we get treated the way we permit ourselves to be treated,” he told us, and each show ended with Jerry advising us to “take care of yourselves, and each other”.
The formula worked. The Springer show ran from 1991 until 2018, nearly 5,000 episodes, and, at its peak in the late 1990s, passed Oprah as the most-watched daytime talkshow. It wasn’t the first of its kind: Geraldo Rivera had evolved from news to trash, while Jenny Jones specialised in revealing guests’ sexual secrets. But Springer’s appeal to chaos influenced countless imitators, and, more crucially, the rise of so-called reality television, in which contestants chosen for their exhibitionism tried to outdo each other in humiliations and conflicts created and scripted by the producers.
The influence seeped over into politics, with the rise of Donald Trump, but Springer got there first. In 2003, as Springer contemplated a serious run for the US Senate from Ohio, the conservative magazine National Review worried he might attract “non-traditional voters who believe most politics is bull … slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnots”. In other words, the way many viewed Springer’s audience.
Springer actually came to American television via serious politics. Born in Highgate tube station, London, during an air raid, he spent his early years in East Finchley. At the age of five he moved to Forest Hills in Queens, New York, where his father, Richard Springer, owned a shoe shop and his mother, Margot (nee Kallman), was a bank clerk. Both parents were Jews who had fled Landsberg in Prussia (now part of Poland). Years later on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? he learned the details of the deaths in concentration camps of both his grandmothers; he lost most of his relatives to the Holocaust.
Springer was active in drama at Forest Hills high school, then took a BA in political science at Tulane University in New Orleans and a law degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1968. That summer, he worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign; after Kennedy’s assassination, he began working at a law firm in Cincinnati, at which he had interned while a student.
In 1970 he lost a race for Congress, but was elected to the city council as a Democrat in 1971. Three years later he resigned for “personal family considerations”, which turned out to be his visiting a sex worker across the Ohio River in Kentucky, and paying her with a personal cheque.

In 1975 he was re-elected to the council for the first of three terms, serving as mayor in 1977-78. During his comeback, he argued that his use of a personal cheque to pay for sex at least proved “his credit was good”. He also opened his own law firm, Grinker, Sudman and Springer. After finishing third in the Democratic primary for governor of Ohio in 1982, Springer turned to broadcasting, joining the NBC affiliate WLTW as a political reporter, then becoming joint host of the main evening news show, which catapulted the station from last to first in the local ratings.
Jerry Springer greets supporters in Cincinnati during a failed campaign in 1982 to become the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio. Photograph: Ed Reinke/AP
In 1991, Multimedia Television, which owned WLTW, began syndicating The Jerry Springer Show, in a political format much like Phil Donahue’s. It soon began to change, especially after Richard Dominick arrived as producer. He had worked on National Enquirer-style tabloid supermarket papers, and for Jones. His real genius lay in taking the talk format away from celebrities and experts, and focusing on ordinary people and their own scandals.
At its peak, Springer was getting upwards of 8 million viewers in daytime, and TV Guide named it the “No 1 worst show in the history of TV”. Dominick also produced two spin-offs: a VH1 backstage documentary series about making the show, and a show starring Springer’s top disentangler, the security chief Steve Wilkos.
Jerry was spun off on his own as well, playing a thinly disguised version of himself in the film Ringmaster (1998) and the US president in The Defender (2004), directed by Dolph Lundgren. He replaced Regis Philbin as host of America’s Got Talent for three years, and from 2010 to 2015 hosted Baggage, a dating game on the Game Show Network.
He guested on television shows, everything from The X-Files to Roseanne; hosted Miss World and Miss Universe beauty pageants and appeared on World Wrestling Entertainment shows. In 2006 he went on Dancing With the Stars to learn how to waltz at his daughter Katie’s wedding.
He was also a success in his country of birth, where imitators such as Jeremy Kyle were not free to generate the same intensity with their content. Springer had more straightforward talkshows on ITV in 2000 and Channel 5 in 2001.
In 2003, Jerry Springer: The Opera, written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, debuted, and ran for almost two years. It won four Olivier awards, including best new musical, before going on tour. In 2005, a BBC broadcast of the musical drew 55,000 complaints, and protests at BBC studios.
The same year ITV ran The Springer Show against Trisha Goddard, who had left it for Channel 5; despite being toned down he triumphed over Goddard in the ratings. He acted in a West End production of Chicago in 2012, guested on Have I Got News for You, and covered Trump’s 2016 election as president for Good Morning Britain.
The Jerry Springer Show ended in 2018, though it is still syndicated by the CW Network. In 2019, Springer began Judge Jerry. It ran for three years. As Springer said: “Television does not and must not create values; it’s merely a picture of all that’s out there – the good, the bad and the ugly.”
While TV might not create values, Springer showed it certainly could amplify them, especially the bad and the ugly.
He married Micki Velton in 1973; they divorced in 1993. Springer is survived by Katie.
Jerry Springer, talkshow host, born 13 February 1944; died 27 April 2023
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 28, 2023
A look back at the career of TV host Jerry Springer – video obituary

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Jerry Springer, the captivating TV host famed for his eponymous and provocative talkshow The Jerry Springer Show, has died aged 79. Springer’s show entertained but also scandalised audiences with its notorious on-air fights, swearing and infidelity revelations. After almost three decades hosting The Jerry Springer Show, he hosted America’s Got Talent and Judge Jerry, a spinoff of the popular Judge Judy show. Jene Galvin, a friend of Springer’s and spokesperson for the family, said he was ‘irreplaceable’. ‘Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street,’ Galvin said.
Born in London in 1944, Springer’s multifaceted career included a period as an advisor to Robert F Kennedy and a brief tenure as the mayor of Cincinnati
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 28, 2023
Jerry Springer: the man who changed US television for better and worse

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I’ll never forget the time I went to a taping of The Jerry Springer Show with two of my closest high school pals. This was back in the 1990s, when Chicago was the center of the talkshow universe and Springer and Oprah were the hottest tickets in town. My parents, bless, wouldn’t have batted an eye if I said I was going to see the queen of daytime. But the king of sleaze? Up to now they wonder how I ever got their permission.
Somewhere in my childhood bedroom, the ticket is sitting in a drawer with the actual episode title – not that the show headings stopped TV Guide from calling it “the worst show in the history of television”. Despite producers’ yeoman efforts to class up the spectacle for censors, it was the same show every day: somebody cheated, somebody didn’t know and we’re all about to find out. This one was no different – and still some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
Springer taped at NBC Tower, which meant you had to walk past a proper television operation to queue up for Jerry’s carnival. When we finally made it on to an industrial-themed set, with its giant fan slowly turning at stage left, it was so much smaller than I had expected. We were seated right behind Steve, the ex-cop turned security chief who’d emerge as a kind of sidekick and fan favorite. Turns out, calling the show’s toll-free hotline not only netted gratis admission, but the best seats in the house.
The spectacle itself didn’t disappoint. The confessions were sotto voce, the reactions were big and the reveals were gasp-inducing. I’m pretty sure at least one chair was thrown, prompting Steve to spring from his seat to break up the ruckus. Through it all, we charged our fists and chanted “Jair-REE! Jair-REE!” while the man at the center of it all couldn’t have appeared less excitable.
That was the irony of Springer, who died on Thursday at age 79, always so serious when the situation was anything but. Perhaps that’s because when his syndicated talkshow first launched in 1991, he was styled to be almost a diet flavor of daytime king Phil Donahue, down to the wire-rimmed specs. But where Phil was an incubated media personality, the London-born Springer actually had a serious career in politics.
He began at 25 as an advisor on Robert F Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and was taking the bar exam in Cincinnati when he learned that his political hero had been gunned down in Los Angeles. Recalling the tragedy years after his talkshow fame, Springer would call RFK ”the most authentic person I’d ever met in politics” – and it was hard to miss the Kennedy influence in young Jerry’s mid-Atlantic delivery and Senator Ted-like hair helmet.
Jerry Springer, always so serious when the situation was anything but. Photograph: Ralf-Finn Hestoft/494552/51B ED/Corbis/Getty Images
In 1971, Springer ran for a congressional seat in Ohio and lost – but still made it to the Capitol to testify before a Senate judiciary committee in favor of lowering the voting age, which prompted a ratifying of the 26th amendment. That same year, he’d win a seat on Cincinnati’s city council only to resign the position three years later after being caught for soliciting in an FBI sting. But the responsibility that he took in that moment, facing up to the camera and admitting his transgressions, was such an outlier in the Watergate era that Springer’s constituents couldn’t help but take heart – and re-elect him in a landslide the next year.
Other than a fiat turn as Cincinnati mayor, Springer was nonetheless deemed too tainted and unfit for higher office. More recently, when Springer had flirted with running for Ohio governor or one of the state’s US Senate seats, Democrats and Republicans could never embrace a guy too many blame for dragging American culture into the sewer. (An unserious candidate, they’d call him.) But Springer was less of an instigator than he was a product of the times. Morton Downey Jr and Geraldo Rivera were trafficking in trash TV long before The Jerry Springer Show went national. Even Oprah wasn’t above devoting a show to “daughters who get pregnant by their fathers … and have the babies”.

What’s more, Springer started out doing a show about politics – a kind of extension of his sharp-tongued local TV news op-eds. But when producer Richard Dominick took over in 1994, he junked that format for episodes on adultery, race wars and other controversies. Before long, the show was not only surging past Oprah in the ratings but spurring Sally Jessy Raphael, Montel Williams and other rivals to shake up their formats, too. Verily, the era of tabloid TV was born.
But what Springer appreciated better than them all was the theater in the absurdity – what, with its Aristotelian motifs, Greek chorus and the threat of violence always hanging in the air. The Springer show was bound to resonate with high schoolers, given Shakespeare’s prominence on the curriculum at the time. What’s more, it’s hardly surprising anymore when Corey Holcomb and other comedians who cut their teeth in Chicago share stories about how they were invited on the show back in the day to help them manufacture trouble.
But Springer didn’t just expose my generation to classic conflict through lowbrow hijinks. For many, he was the first introduction to gay people, to trans culture – to communities still on the fringe and pushing for mainstream rights and respect. He proved dramatic telly could be manufactured by show producers. Steve got his own show! Springer’s hand in the rise of reality TV is unmistakable. Without him, Mona Scott-Young isn’t churning out seasons of Love & Hip Hop, and my dad isn’t asking me, “How can you watch this stuff?”
And then he’ll stop and remember, “you’re the same guy who saw Jerry Springer live”. Of course Springer was on screen plenty after his show’s 27-year run closed, from Question Time to the Masked Singer. But the chatshow is his legacy and not a half bad one for TV’s ultimate straight man. I’d give anything to go back.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 28, 2023
Jerry Springer Show: his most outrageous TV moments

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During his 27-year run as a TV host, Jerry Springer became synonymous with a few tropes: the paternity test, the bleeped-out swearing, the security guards always ready to break up a fight. Nearly every one of his 4,000 episodes could be considered explosive, but there are a few moments that surpass even the wackiest standards of tabloid TV.
After his death on Thursday at the age of 79, there is no better time to look back at the craziest Jerry Springer moments of all time.
You Slept With My Stripper Sister!
Let’s start with a 2011 clip that has everything: one family member revealing a “secret” to another, a cheating boyfriend, and, yes, a stripper sister. The unassuming woman tells Springer upfront that she knows whatever her sister has to reveal to her “can’t be good”, because we all know how this goes. But, to be fair, her sister has a history of sleeping with the woman’s exes. When she comes onstage and lets her sister know that she bedded her boyfriend after a night at the club and apologizes, there is the requisite slapping and hair-pulling. Things only get worse when the boyfriend tries to say he’s sorry, but ends up slapped as well.
Confronting a Racist Family
‘I feel sorry for you’: Jerry Springer confronts antisemitic priest – video
Springer often hosted racists and Ku Klux Klan members on his show – and as the son of Jewish-German refugees who fled the Nazis, the subject was quite personal to him. In 1995, he told an antisemitic priest, “I don’t hate you, I feel sorry for you.” When the priest went into a Holocaust-denial rant, Springer told him to “shut your face”, which almost led to blows.

‘I Slept With 251 Men in 10 Hours!’
In 1995, Springer spoke to Annabel Chong, a 22-year-old porn actor who took part in the “world’s biggest gangbang”. Despite the predictable slut-shaming that took place (“Are you ever going to be able to love a man?” Springer asked), Chong spoke of the experience as an empowering reversal of gender norms. “Why not?” she said of her decision. After some years in the industry, Chong went on to work in software development – and left her record behind. It was broken by Jasmin St Clair, who also went on Jerry Springer to discuss the feat.
‘I Married A Horse’
In 2004, Springer introduced the world to Mark, a Missouri farmer and zoophile who introduced a truly disgusted audience to his wife, a horse named Pixel. “I had to earn her love and respect,” Mark said in a voiceover, while showing off photos he had taken of Pixel wearing women’s underwear (with a hole cut in the bum for her tail). “As far as sex goes, we make love. We don’t fool around on each other.” Springer would later tell Meredith Viera that he did not know what Mark was going to reveal on the show, which explains why he felt physically ill on-air.
‘Married to Your Dad But Want You Back’
In a love story of Shakespearean proportions, a Montana woman fell in love with a California man, who apparently walked 1,200 miles to be with her (he didn’t have a car). When they broke up, she ended up with his father, who she had a child with – her ex-husband’s younger sister. But regret nagged at the woman so much that she tried to reunite with the son on Springer’s show. He declined.
“Zack … the 70lb Baby”
A rare happy ending for a Springer guest: in 1996, baby Zack Strenkert made headlines for his size and weight. (He was later diagnosed with Simpson Golabi Behmel Syndrome, which causes overgrowth.) His parents lived an unconventional life, putting their infant in adult diapers, but it didn’t matter. “Wouldn’t change him for the world,” his father said during his first appearance on the show. Strenkert returned to the show as an adult, saying he was happy and working as a competitive gamer.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 27, 2023
Jerry Springer, influential US talkshow host, dies aged 79

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The talkshow host Jerry Springer, a former mayor of Cincinnati whose work was vastly influential in daytime TV worldwide, has died. He was 79.
Springer’s family said he died “peacefully” on Thursday at home in Chicago.
In a statement, the family said: “Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word.
“He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”
Springer was best known for his 27-year, near-4,000-episode run as host of his eponymous talkshow, which featured guests who purportedly engaged in controversial, excessive and often overtly sexual behavior.
Episode titles that could have been ripped from tabloid headlines included I Slept with 251 Men in 10 Hours!, I’m a Breeder for the Klan and I Married a Horse.
Guests often broke into chair-wielding brawls or fretted while Springer read paternity test results on air.
The show often generated negative headlines. A 15-year-old boy in Florida charged with sexual battery of his half-sister, aged eight, told detectives he learned what incest was from Springer. A woman in a segment entitled Secret Mistresses Confronted was found dead within hours of broadcast.

Despite it all, in 1998, seven years into its run, the show briefly enjoyed stronger ratings than Oprah Winfrey’s more mainstream daytime offering.
It catapulted Springer to fame, including the 1998 Hollywood comedy Ringmaster, loosely based on his life, and a cameo in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me in 1999, the same year he signed a contract worth $30m. The show also inspired a musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera, which logged more than 600 performances in London from 2003 to 2005.
Springer at a rally in Cincinnati in June 1982, during his unsuccessful run for governor of Ohio. Photograph: Ed Reinke/AP
On Thursday, the journalist and Twitter influencer Yashar Ali said the weekday daytime slot Springer’s show held at the height of its popularity helped it make an indelible impression on American millennials.
“Jerry Springer wasn’t just a host,” Ali wrote on Twitter. “He was also the babysitter for many millennials who were home sick from school.”
KSI, a YouTube celebrity, said: “RIP Jerry Springer. You made my off days at school so much more entertaining.”
The show was taken off the air in 2018, years after its audience began to dwindle. Springer later hosted a courtroom show that was canceled after three seasons. From 2007 to 2008, he hosted America’s Got Talent.
Some credited his success with inspiring other critically panned ratings magnets including Real Housewives and 90-Day Fiance.
In November last year, Springer said he was “so sorry” for the cultural impact his show had at the turn of the century.
“I just apologize,” he told David Yontef, host of the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast. “What have I done? I’ve ruined the culture. I just hope hell isn’t that hot because I burn real easy. I’m very light-complected.”
Yet he would also bristle when his work was dismissed as “trash”.
“It’s basically elitist,” Springer said. “You have all these celebrities [coming on other shows to] … talk about who they slept with, what drugs they’ve been on, what misbehavior they had, and we can’t buy enough tickets to their shows. We can’t buy enough of their albums. We go to see their movies. We buy their books.
“We think they’re god-like.”
Jerry Springer defends his talk show against its ‘elitist’ critics – video
Gerald Norman Springer was born in London during the second world war after his family fled Nazi Germany. He was four when his family moved to New York.
In 1965, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tulane University in New Orleans. He received a law degree from Northwestern University in Illinois three years later, and advised the presidential campaign of Robert F Kennedy before being elected to the Cincinnati city council in 1971.
He resigned his seat in 1974, after admitting soliciting a sex worker. Styling himself as a liberal, Springer successfully ran for re-election to the council after apologizing and addressing the scandal head-on in his advertising, and the panel picked him to serve a year as Cincinnati’s mayor, beginning in 1977.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, while apparently resorting to a double entendre referencing both his sex worker solicitation and his demoralizing resignation, Springer said of his elevation to mayor: “When I think of being flat on my back three years ago, having this happen is almost unbelievable. This is the best feeling I’ve ever had in my political life.”
In 1982, Springer ran unsuccessfully for governor of Ohio. In one campaign ad he said: “Nine years ago I spent time with a woman I shouldn’t have. And I paid her with a check. I wish I hadn’t done that. And the truth is, I wish no one would ever know. But in the rough world of politics, opponents are not about to let personal embarrassments lay to rest.
“… The next governor is going to have to take some heavy risks and face some hard truths. I’m prepared to do that. This commercial should be proof. I’m not afraid, even of the truth, and even if it hurts.”
On Thursday, the political commentator David Axelrod wrote on Twitter that Springer was “funny, self-effacing, incisive” during his political career.
Henry Gomez of NBC News added that as recently as the early 2000s, Springer was the Democratic party’s best hope of securing statewide office in conservative Ohio.
Springer left politics to become a news anchor and commentator at the Cincinnati television station WLWT, setting the stage for his talkshow career.
WLWT reported on Thursday that plans for funeral services and a memorial gathering were still being formed. His family asked the public to consider honoring him by donating to “a worthy advocacy organization” or simply being kind to someone.
“As he always said [at the end of his shows], ‘Take care of yourself – and each other’,” WLWT added.
Springer’s family said he died from pancreatic cancer.

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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 27, 2023
Former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer Dies at 79

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Jerry Springer hosted “The Jerry Springer Show” from 1991 to 2018. | Terry Gilliam/AP Photo
By Kierra Frazier
04/27/2023 11:17 AM EDT
Updated:
04/27/2023 12:06 PM EDT
Former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer has died at 79 after a brief illness, according to the Associated Press.
Springer was best known for his show, “The Jerry Springer Show,” which aired from 1991 to 2018. Guests on the outlandish show were faced with a spouse or family member’s controversial issues, such as adultery. The confrontations led to chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments.
The show’s tilt into tabloid sensationalism drew a wide range of reactions from audiences. At one point, “The Jerry Springer Show” eclipsed “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in viewership. Conversely, the show was also named No. 1 on TV Guide’s list of the “Worst Shows In The History Of Television.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 27, 2023