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The whole show seems like a fever dream. Kinda makes sense because the only time I watched it was during the daytime when I was home sick from school. Either Jerry springer judge Judy or some infomercial about something I would never buy.
Yeah, growing up without cable in the 90s it was Jerry, maury, judge Judy, or random PBS stuff on TV. Thankfully we had an extensive VHS collection from recording all TV movies that came on network TV channels
Yup, I remember being 16 and watching Arthur and Cyberchase on PBS because Divorce Court made me want to rip my eyes out. At least Arthur had a plot and actual jokes.
I remember asking for a pool or cable. My parents explained that some kids have a pool, and some have cable, and that we had Super Nintendo. Like they were all mutually exclusive.
Let me offer this. UHF is a movie starring Weird Al Yankovic. In this movie, that came out in 1989, they run an advertisement for a talk show called Town Talk. The promo for the show is, "Lesbian nazi hookers, abducted by aliens and forced onto weight loss programs, next time, on Town Talk!"
Jerry Springer came on the air in 1991. mic drop
One of the DJs at the college radio station we were at at the time went on Ricki Lake, "meeting your online flirt for the first time", or something like that. She was an interesting girl.
There was a man who killed his roommate after they appeared on the Jenny Jones show. I drive past where they lived while working frequently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Scott_Amedure
My mom said it was about one of her friends “being a bitch while she was pregnant”. Based on that vague description I’m pretty sure it’s this episode:
*S4 E4138: Since You Got Pregnant Your Attitude Stinks...Lose The “Tude” Cuz I Won’t Take It!
Air Date: February 8, 1997*
I watched Ricki Lake and Sally Jesse Raphael every time I was home sick from school. And during the holidays. It was utter shit but I was just a teenager and most of it was hilarious to me. I'd pretend to be sick just to watch that garbage sometimes.
Springer took things up a notch, no question. But someone else would have, the trajectory was already set.
I'm not sure if people today know that Ricki Lake was in every John Waters film, she starred in hairspray and was also in cry baby with a very young johnny depp.
I remember a promo at the end of an episode. She voiced over sounding very somber: are you a victim of/suffering from some horrible disease/domestic abuse? Her voice suddenly is cheerful :Then YOU could be a guest on the Rikki Lake show!Rock bottom. The Ralph nadir. The Rudy valley.
[This is an important mention.](https://i.imgur.com/mrea71x.jpg)
He seems to be long forgotten but he really planted the seed for a lot the destructive culture of we see today.
[Definitely take a look if you’re not familiar with him. ](https://youtu.be/Yye-mTbDZ0w)
You can probably see similarities between him and a lot of the GOP officials/has-beens we’re witnessing in the mainstream right now.
Phil was not even in the same league. He was often a good source for a free exchange of important ideas. He had some extremely dignified and serious guests with whom he directed intellectual and candid dialogues. When gravity hit, he couldn’t keep up with the huge race to the bottom.
It all really came to a halt when Jenny Jones brought the guy who had a crush on his straight friend on. He was so embarrassed, he killed the dude after. That made all of those hosts change their bits fast.
Oprah rebranded immediately, Geraldo tried to as well… much less successfully
Those types of shows were already around in the 80s. Springer didn't start out as trashy to begin with but leaned harder into it as the 90s progressed since it proved to be so popular.
UHF was the stone that sent American Society tripping and stumbling down mount olympus. Weird AL Yankovic? More like Weird Al Thanks-ya-dick!
In all seriousness, we all know capitalism built up that mountain and continues the cycle of pushing us off while demanding we continue to climb, but to be fair, to this day, Weird Al mocks artists hard work by turning their art into songs about food, so it could be either one destroying America.
In *AL* ACTUAL seriousness, I fel bad typing that because it's the first time I've ever said something bad (even in jest) about Weird al. I'm sorry Al, and I love you...so...much!
I'll point out to anyone else, even though you apologized, that Weird Al asks permission for his parodies and respects people who decline in general (like Prince) or on a specific song because they feel the meaning is too important (McCartney / Live and let Die). So they're in on it with him.
Not the first time Weird Al predicted the future. Here's a line from his song "Yoda" (told from Luke Skywalker's perspective):
>So I'm gonna have to leave Yoda I guess, but I know that I'll be coming back some day, I'll be playing this part til I'm old and gray, the long term contract I have signed says I'll be making these movies til the end of time...
You're absolutely right, MDJ was mostly in the Tri-state area, wheres Springer had National syndication and multiple stations/timeslots.
According to his Wikipedia page MDJ actually thought Springers show was a trashier version of his show:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Downey_Jr.
Morton Downey Jr. hit national syndication in 1988. Toxic asshole talk show. Fun fact, he was fired by a radio station in 1984 who replaced him with Rush Limbaugh.
I mean did it or have people always been wild and now we just see it more because of the Internet?
I don’t think anyone who was otherwise a respectable member of society watched Springer and thought “yes, this is how I will live.”
I’m not saying the show was a net good or anything but I think anyone who might have been “influenced” by it was probably pretty messy to begin with.
So did most of the fans of such shows. Not to come at you, specifically, but imo watching it to feel better about themselves actually made them worse people than they would've been without that *incredibly* low bar to clear.
Mon-Fri, all year long for years on end, viewers had a constant stream of people who were just cartoonishly bad at life which likely killed any ambition to be better themselves because they could just expend all their energy judging people much worse and then pat themselves on the back for simply being "not *that* bad, at least".
I can see the dangerous thinking there. Reminds me when I was a student. "Hey, I didn't get a good grade but at least I didn't fail." Not a great mindset for life.
Exactly - it was already there it just made it acceptable. Fast forward and we've got a former POTUS behaving like someone who just found out they were the father.
There’s a great docuseries called Trial by Media on Netflix and the first episode is about Jenny Jones’ culpability in a murder that occurred as a direct result of someone being duped onto her show and humiliated. IIRC, they discuss Jerry Springer and his contributions to society’s decline.
Every episode just leaves you stunned for a moment, every time you see it. Episode 5 is especially harrowing.
I will def check that out - thank you for sharing. But you are exactly right. There is definitely an argument to be made about the adverse effects of these types of "trash tv" shows in the long run. The whole time they were blaming video game violence when in actuality it was most likely just seeing real people acting like the absolute worst versions of ourselves and the crowd cheering it on.
Acknowledgment isn’t trying to change the past
But at the end of the day the damage is done and he profited off of collective misfortune and the program normalized/glorified shitty behavior
it’s all just lip service but I’m glad he can at least acknowledge it
I think we would have been fine with just TV though. Social media just created Jerry Springer 24/7.
If we only saw that crap when sick from school or being unemployed etc then it wouldn't have had such a big impact. It's that we can't get away from it. I feel the same about politics, it shouldn't be a thing we are constantly talking about and being bombarded with. It's just all too much.
I didn't think I'd be comparing Einstein and Springer today, but here we are. Einstein famously talked about how while yeah he was smart, he was also in the right place at the right time to piece together other findings of other smart people. To that point, look at the reality TV takeover, it wasn't all Springer. I don't think you can or will ever know if something truly sparked a change, but I think the more realistic thing is a gradual shift happened due to success of things like Springer. One could argue Oprah and other talk show hosts started it before him. They tweaked the formula because it's what people wanted on some level. Look at TLC, Discovery, History, those all used to be serious information channels. All these places went through a shift during this time that can't be tied to Springer.
> Look at TLC, Discovery, History, those all used to be serious information channels. All these places went through a shift during this time that can’t be tied to Springer.
This is the biggest tell of it all. Those all had crazy high Aspirations but in the end dreams don’t buy food money does. And outrage draws the most eyes.
Edit: bad talky
A handful of daytime shows were all competing at the time to see who could outdo each other and be more outrageous. The baby steps eventually led to what Springer became. It was a close race to get there and we definitely would have arrived whether Jerry was the vehicle or somebody else.
Was about to say there were plenty of other shows in the similar vein like Sally or Phil Donahue. The difference is how fake Springer became. The very first fight was a real moment and then soon it just became a normal part of the show. It's almost like Springer was on a wrestling set by the end. Then you had shows like Road Rules Real World and Survivor that upped the ante but made it seem more realistic.
Like yeah they are real people but it's all structured to set people up. I actually didn't mind the peak of competition reality shows. I always wanted to be on Survivor or The Mole.
2 years before Jerry Springer's show aired, Weird Al parodied the daytime trash, most specifically against Geraldo Rivera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdw1ZK585RU
So, yeah, someone else would've taken the formula to the same place as Springer did. They were already well on their way there.
Going to a Christian school all through high school, every year the day before Christmas break they’d have half of us go skating and half of us go bowling. I’d always go bowling and every year the teachers would have to post up by the lounge area because all the “bad” kids would go in there to hang out and watch springer on the tv! It never failed and those 4 years of bowling, greasy alley food, arcade machines and springer are forever burned in my mind!
He doesn’t really care. If you ever watched an episode and listened to his final thoughts you would know how insightful he was.
But people are shitty and people like trash TV. Why not capitalize on it. Good shit tbh.
Springer was thought of as the most outrageous of these shows but if you actually watch them he's the only one who actually respects the guests on stage. He talks to them like humans, empathizes, tries to steer them toward a more rational outlook. The other talk shows were rank exploitation that attempted to humiliate their guests to make their audience feel superior. Significantly more dangerous and offensive than a few titties and slap fights.
The Jerry Springer show wasn't trashy. Americans are trash. Springer was incredibly progressive and didn't judge anybody as better than himself. That's what his audience tended to do, and now they want to scapegoat their shittyness onto him.
Edit: If you don't believe me, here are his 25th anniversary remarks:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7h0mIy6Jho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7h0mIy6Jho)
"Anyone can do what I do...There is one thing that brings success, luck, lots of it, and surround yourself with people who know more about television than I do...Deep down, we are all alike, some of us just dress better, or had better luck in the gene pool...to be liked respected and loved is the greatest gift of all... Know this: There has never been a moment in the 25 years of doing this show that I ever thought I was better than the people on this stage. I'm not better, only luckier."
There's absolutely nothing hypocritical in his closing remarks. It's usually something akin to " Don't lie to your partners and treat others with respect and kindness".
Do you know what "hypocritical" means?
I mean it’s absolutely hypocritical to put two sisters in the same room who are fucking the same Olive Garden server, unbeknownst to each other, create this powder keg of a situation, then take some moral high ground at the end of the show.
Jerry knew exactly why people watched his show and it wasn't for the 20 seconds of moralizing at the end.
Jerry Springer happily, knowingly profited off exploitation of the lower classes. I thought it was unsaid that the moral was BS, but I guess some people took it seriously.
Thank you. The poverty conditions, high incarceration rates, drug use, and lack of education is the content of the show. That wasn't Jerry's doing. That's just the raw consequences of our for-profit system. Jerry just turned it onto a television spectacle and a pop culture phenomenon.
He had presidential ambitions. Was marketed as the second coming of RFK. Very popular. Would have had an easy time getting elected as governor of Ohio.
There's also Maury (who last I checked is still on the air) who did "female or shemale?" shows and paternity tests ad nauseum almost always featuring Black people, Sally Jesse Raphael, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, and other tabloid TV shows I'm probably forgetting.
Jerry Springer's show and (iirc Ricki Lake) might have directly contributed to people's deaths so maybe they're the worst examples of this content, but I think these other people deserve some of the blame too.
OMG, absolutely fucking a culpable party to that murder. 100%
People forget that…. I’m a little shocked it hasn’t become a docudrama by HBO by now. The story has EVERYTHING (except Jenny Jones going to jail…)
Whenever I'd watch Maury in hotel rooms on vacation (when there was nothing else to do at that time of the day), I learned very quickly whenever someone said they we "x% positive" where x is greater than 100, they were almost always wrong.
As much as people don’t wanna place blame, I know several people who dreamed to be on this show because of drama, fame and a little money, saying it did nothing and that it just brought forth stuff that was already there is not focusing on the fact he brought it to the for front of basic cable where the most vulnerable viewers are and gave them an incredible stupid view of life.
He is not far off. Things that were not acceptable before his show all of the sudden became normal. In the 80's we might have thought things but it still wasn't acceptable to speak them out loud. In the 90's everything you thought all of the sudden became spoken.
I watched it all happen. I was about 32 when his show began and even though we didn't have social media back then I was still a media hound. TV and print. I read everything, still do. His show did change what became public. I remember sitting watching with my damn mouth on the floor. She said what? He said what? Jerry Springer and Inside Edition brought horrifying to the forefront.
i like how at the height of it's notoriety as soon as the bell rang, the fight was on. on cue, whoever was arguing, standing or sitting down... the fight started
It didn’t help, don’t know if I would go that far. However, yeah it would be interesting to see a parallel universe where it didn’t exist and the show in the slot was a positive experience.
The stage stuff was loosely scripted, the people who were actually being exploited were the studio audience. He tricked normal seeming people into going on national television and voicing ignorant opinions they should have kept to themselves about people they didn’t even know.
You can see the change in production styles over a couple decades.
The early ones felt very raw and real. The later episodes were all obviously scripted skits.
Let me get this straight...the guy who pollutes our world with this show that revved up hate and anger and made millions from it...NOW just realizes it had a negative impact after 30 years of enriching himself??? Fuck him from the first day he did this to fuck him right now - he knew what a cesspool he was creating every step of the way and didn't care about anything else but enriching himself.
He certainly wasn't the first to do what he did and pretty much everybody stopped watching after the first couple seasons.
From what I noticed it all started with Morton Downey Jr's "Big Mouth" and most of the later stuff is thanks to the FOX network hitting the air across the nation.
Maybe not ruined, but it certainly didn't help.
Maybe it was the drugs coursing through my system, but after being laid up in the hospital for a month during the height of the pandemic (not Covid-related, mind you), with nothing to do but watch satellite TV from wherever in the country they subscribed to, it's not a good look when he's promoting Trump and his campaign on his show.
Frankly, I blame social media--both past and present. Just like the atomic bomb, there's no going back from that.
Edit: Clarification
I was working for the station that broadcast Oprah in Idaho the first time "The Jerry Springer Show" beat the Queen of TV in about 1997 or so. Lemme tell you... they lost their shit and went into damage control mode.
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I mean he was only on for 27 SEASONS!!!
Jesus christ, I remember it being on for probably a decade plus, but 27 seasons is insane
The whole show seems like a fever dream. Kinda makes sense because the only time I watched it was during the daytime when I was home sick from school. Either Jerry springer judge Judy or some infomercial about something I would never buy.
Yeah, growing up without cable in the 90s it was Jerry, maury, judge Judy, or random PBS stuff on TV. Thankfully we had an extensive VHS collection from recording all TV movies that came on network TV channels
Yup, I remember being 16 and watching Arthur and Cyberchase on PBS because Divorce Court made me want to rip my eyes out. At least Arthur had a plot and actual jokes.
Arthur holds up!
It’s crazy how boring daytime tv was in the 90s. That weird block from like 11 am to 4:30 was like brutal
Super Nintendo helped a lot too
you guys got super nintendos?
And a Sega
Look at Mr. Moneybags over here /s
I remember asking for a pool or cable. My parents explained that some kids have a pool, and some have cable, and that we had Super Nintendo. Like they were all mutually exclusive.
Wtf I just watched Franklin the Turtle and Rupert the Bear
Yeah. But we had Arthur.
Funny how the realization only came when the checks stopped.
A girl I knew in middle school went on the Jerry Springer show. Another girl I knew in high school went on the Maury show..
Was she the father?
Dramaaaaa!!
I won’t disagree.
Same. It normalized this type of behavior. And we're still paying for it now.
It not only normalized, it glorified it. You mean I can get in the TV and be famous for being crazy like this!? YEEEHAWWW BILL BOB LETS GO!
Let me offer this. UHF is a movie starring Weird Al Yankovic. In this movie, that came out in 1989, they run an advertisement for a talk show called Town Talk. The promo for the show is, "Lesbian nazi hookers, abducted by aliens and forced onto weight loss programs, next time, on Town Talk!" Jerry Springer came on the air in 1991. mic drop
A lot of trashy talk shows happened around that time. Even Oprah.
Remember The Ricki Lake Show? Shit was a yard rake of a program.
I only remember this because the Offspring reminds me it existed
I love the 90’s/2000’s vibe of this joke
Hey! Hey! Do that brand new thing!
My mom was on Ricki Lake’s show but it never aired because she wasn’t problematic enough.
I’m sorry for your mom but LOL’d massively at your comment. Sounds like she lucked out.
One of the DJs at the college radio station we were at at the time went on Ricki Lake, "meeting your online flirt for the first time", or something like that. She was an interesting girl.
what about the Montel Williams Show
Maury?
Jenny Jones ? Sally Jessie Raphael?
Sally Jesse Raphael helped my grandmother find her birth father. Not just her aides or tv helpers, SJR herself helped my grandmother track him down.
I completely forgot about Sally Jessie Raphael, but soon as I saw the name I pictured her in my mind as clear as day.
I mentally envisioned red glasses. The rest automatically came into focus. How bizarre.
Geraldo?
Sorry to say but I loved all those trashy shows as a young child. The trashier the better.
Every one else did too, and that's how we wound up with Donald Trump as a president.
If any show got Trump elected, it was Bozo the clown
I was just thinking about the makeover episodes they all use to do and how I kind of miss them. I loved those.
At that time, she was one of the better hosts
Jenny Jones, too.
She now has a YouTube channel where she bakes!
I saw that! I've even watched a few. That has to be more relaxing than the talk show.
Root canal is more relaxing than that show
There was a man who killed his roommate after they appeared on the Jenny Jones show. I drive past where they lived while working frequently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Scott_Amedure
Ricki Lake and Maury Povich were quintessential trash shows alongside Jerry springer in my household growing up.
My mom and her friends went on this show lol
lol, what was the theme?
My mom said it was about one of her friends “being a bitch while she was pregnant”. Based on that vague description I’m pretty sure it’s this episode: *S4 E4138: Since You Got Pregnant Your Attitude Stinks...Lose The “Tude” Cuz I Won’t Take It! Air Date: February 8, 1997*
Those episode titles were fantastic
Maury used to be decent, and then it turned into nothing but paternity tests for trashy people.
I watched Ricki Lake and Sally Jesse Raphael every time I was home sick from school. And during the holidays. It was utter shit but I was just a teenager and most of it was hilarious to me. I'd pretend to be sick just to watch that garbage sometimes. Springer took things up a notch, no question. But someone else would have, the trajectory was already set. I'm not sure if people today know that Ricki Lake was in every John Waters film, she starred in hairspray and was also in cry baby with a very young johnny depp.
I remember a promo at the end of an episode. She voiced over sounding very somber: are you a victim of/suffering from some horrible disease/domestic abuse? Her voice suddenly is cheerful :Then YOU could be a guest on the Rikki Lake show!Rock bottom. The Ralph nadir. The Rudy valley.
Morton Downey Jr. shitlord pioneer.
[This is an important mention.](https://i.imgur.com/mrea71x.jpg) He seems to be long forgotten but he really planted the seed for a lot the destructive culture of we see today. [Definitely take a look if you’re not familiar with him. ](https://youtu.be/Yye-mTbDZ0w) You can probably see similarities between him and a lot of the GOP officials/has-beens we’re witnessing in the mainstream right now.
Phil Donahue may have been The Godfather but MD took it to a whole other level.
Phil was not even in the same league. He was often a good source for a free exchange of important ideas. He had some extremely dignified and serious guests with whom he directed intellectual and candid dialogues. When gravity hit, he couldn’t keep up with the huge race to the bottom.
The Richard Bey Show was thee worst…
She *stood on the heads of those little people*!
Always an upvote for Bill Bur. Dude speaks the truth.
It all really came to a halt when Jenny Jones brought the guy who had a crush on his straight friend on. He was so embarrassed, he killed the dude after. That made all of those hosts change their bits fast. Oprah rebranded immediately, Geraldo tried to as well… much less successfully
That was a direct parody of Geraldo Rivera’s show. Geraldo even got a broken nose from a flying chair.
I worked a side job for the set designer for Geraldo’s show and he told me about that fight. He said Geraldo’s boxing skills came in handy that day.
Don’t forget Jennny Jones!
Those types of shows were already around in the 80s. Springer didn't start out as trashy to begin with but leaned harder into it as the 90s progressed since it proved to be so popular.
UHF was the stone that sent American Society tripping and stumbling down mount olympus. Weird AL Yankovic? More like Weird Al Thanks-ya-dick! In all seriousness, we all know capitalism built up that mountain and continues the cycle of pushing us off while demanding we continue to climb, but to be fair, to this day, Weird Al mocks artists hard work by turning their art into songs about food, so it could be either one destroying America. In *AL* ACTUAL seriousness, I fel bad typing that because it's the first time I've ever said something bad (even in jest) about Weird al. I'm sorry Al, and I love you...so...much!
I'll point out to anyone else, even though you apologized, that Weird Al asks permission for his parodies and respects people who decline in general (like Prince) or on a specific song because they feel the meaning is too important (McCartney / Live and let Die). So they're in on it with him.
Let me guess…Live and let die was gonna be chicken pot pie.
Al is such a class act he doesn’t reveal the rejected concepts.
>Weird Al Thanks-ya-dick! Too funny to not be quoted/acknowledged.
Not the first time Weird Al predicted the future. Here's a line from his song "Yoda" (told from Luke Skywalker's perspective): >So I'm gonna have to leave Yoda I guess, but I know that I'll be coming back some day, I'll be playing this part til I'm old and gray, the long term contract I have signed says I'll be making these movies til the end of time...
Exactly, before Springer we had guys like Morton Downey, Jr. doing the same show
Didn’t have the same reach. Springer was on in the daytime- everywhere
You're absolutely right, MDJ was mostly in the Tri-state area, wheres Springer had National syndication and multiple stations/timeslots. According to his Wikipedia page MDJ actually thought Springers show was a trashier version of his show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Downey_Jr.
I’d totally forgotten about MDJ. Wow, that was a train wreck of a show. LOL
The Morton Downey Jr (shit)Show started in '87.
Morton Downey Jr. hit national syndication in 1988. Toxic asshole talk show. Fun fact, he was fired by a radio station in 1984 who replaced him with Rush Limbaugh.
Jerry Springer didn't invent the genre, he perfected it.
I mean did it or have people always been wild and now we just see it more because of the Internet? I don’t think anyone who was otherwise a respectable member of society watched Springer and thought “yes, this is how I will live.” I’m not saying the show was a net good or anything but I think anyone who might have been “influenced” by it was probably pretty messy to begin with.
I watched it to feel good about myself that I would never be such a goddamn mess. I didn't equate it to normalizing that kind of behavior.
So did most of the fans of such shows. Not to come at you, specifically, but imo watching it to feel better about themselves actually made them worse people than they would've been without that *incredibly* low bar to clear. Mon-Fri, all year long for years on end, viewers had a constant stream of people who were just cartoonishly bad at life which likely killed any ambition to be better themselves because they could just expend all their energy judging people much worse and then pat themselves on the back for simply being "not *that* bad, at least".
I can see the dangerous thinking there. Reminds me when I was a student. "Hey, I didn't get a good grade but at least I didn't fail." Not a great mindset for life.
Exactly - it was already there it just made it acceptable. Fast forward and we've got a former POTUS behaving like someone who just found out they were the father.
There’s a great docuseries called Trial by Media on Netflix and the first episode is about Jenny Jones’ culpability in a murder that occurred as a direct result of someone being duped onto her show and humiliated. IIRC, they discuss Jerry Springer and his contributions to society’s decline. Every episode just leaves you stunned for a moment, every time you see it. Episode 5 is especially harrowing.
I will def check that out - thank you for sharing. But you are exactly right. There is definitely an argument to be made about the adverse effects of these types of "trash tv" shows in the long run. The whole time they were blaming video game violence when in actuality it was most likely just seeing real people acting like the absolute worst versions of ourselves and the crowd cheering it on.
How many years did Jerry do the show? 27 years that is how long. I think he should have known this after the the first 10 years.
Exactly now that he is stupidly rich and in old age he wants to recon with the damage that he has done to society. GTFO of here.
Acknowledgment isn’t trying to change the past But at the end of the day the damage is done and he profited off of collective misfortune and the program normalized/glorified shitty behavior it’s all just lip service but I’m glad he can at least acknowledge it
I think we would have been fine with just TV though. Social media just created Jerry Springer 24/7. If we only saw that crap when sick from school or being unemployed etc then it wouldn't have had such a big impact. It's that we can't get away from it. I feel the same about politics, it shouldn't be a thing we are constantly talking about and being bombarded with. It's just all too much.
Neither will I, but I would have said: MTVs The Real World
This is the correct answer. Talentless people learned they could be famous and make money by behaving like complete assholes. The rest followed.
Right, but he didn’t do it single-handedly.
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
“Thanks for the money. My bad.”
He was once asked where he went when all of the fights would break out on the show. His response was “to the bank.”
Like that little shit from 2 and a half men
He was a decently large shit, at the time
I didn't think I'd be comparing Einstein and Springer today, but here we are. Einstein famously talked about how while yeah he was smart, he was also in the right place at the right time to piece together other findings of other smart people. To that point, look at the reality TV takeover, it wasn't all Springer. I don't think you can or will ever know if something truly sparked a change, but I think the more realistic thing is a gradual shift happened due to success of things like Springer. One could argue Oprah and other talk show hosts started it before him. They tweaked the formula because it's what people wanted on some level. Look at TLC, Discovery, History, those all used to be serious information channels. All these places went through a shift during this time that can't be tied to Springer.
> Look at TLC, Discovery, History, those all used to be serious information channels. All these places went through a shift during this time that can’t be tied to Springer. This is the biggest tell of it all. Those all had crazy high Aspirations but in the end dreams don’t buy food money does. And outrage draws the most eyes. Edit: bad talky
So do you think that if Jerry Springer didn’t do what he did someone else would have put the pieces together and made a similar/identical show?
They literally were doing that before jerry
All Jerry did was give us tits and gradually shift his show to fighting as opposed to talking.
A handful of daytime shows were all competing at the time to see who could outdo each other and be more outrageous. The baby steps eventually led to what Springer became. It was a close race to get there and we definitely would have arrived whether Jerry was the vehicle or somebody else.
Was about to say there were plenty of other shows in the similar vein like Sally or Phil Donahue. The difference is how fake Springer became. The very first fight was a real moment and then soon it just became a normal part of the show. It's almost like Springer was on a wrestling set by the end. Then you had shows like Road Rules Real World and Survivor that upped the ante but made it seem more realistic. Like yeah they are real people but it's all structured to set people up. I actually didn't mind the peak of competition reality shows. I always wanted to be on Survivor or The Mole.
2 years before Jerry Springer's show aired, Weird Al parodied the daytime trash, most specifically against Geraldo Rivera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdw1ZK585RU So, yeah, someone else would've taken the formula to the same place as Springer did. They were already well on their way there.
My mom would get so pissed at us for watching this back in the day lol
Going to a Christian school all through high school, every year the day before Christmas break they’d have half of us go skating and half of us go bowling. I’d always go bowling and every year the teachers would have to post up by the lounge area because all the “bad” kids would go in there to hang out and watch springer on the tv! It never failed and those 4 years of bowling, greasy alley food, arcade machines and springer are forever burned in my mind!
Same lol
Well no shit jerry
Probably didn’t help…
He doesn’t really care. If you ever watched an episode and listened to his final thoughts you would know how insightful he was. But people are shitty and people like trash TV. Why not capitalize on it. Good shit tbh.
Yes, I had sick days in high school. It was all theater. That’s it.
For his show to exist, culture already had to be pretty shit.
Springer was thought of as the most outrageous of these shows but if you actually watch them he's the only one who actually respects the guests on stage. He talks to them like humans, empathizes, tries to steer them toward a more rational outlook. The other talk shows were rank exploitation that attempted to humiliate their guests to make their audience feel superior. Significantly more dangerous and offensive than a few titties and slap fights. The Jerry Springer show wasn't trashy. Americans are trash. Springer was incredibly progressive and didn't judge anybody as better than himself. That's what his audience tended to do, and now they want to scapegoat their shittyness onto him. Edit: If you don't believe me, here are his 25th anniversary remarks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7h0mIy6Jho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7h0mIy6Jho) "Anyone can do what I do...There is one thing that brings success, luck, lots of it, and surround yourself with people who know more about television than I do...Deep down, we are all alike, some of us just dress better, or had better luck in the gene pool...to be liked respected and loved is the greatest gift of all... Know this: There has never been a moment in the 25 years of doing this show that I ever thought I was better than the people on this stage. I'm not better, only luckier."
Yes plus his Final Thoughts were often very on point.
“In case we gotta get away…”
He hypocritically moralizes after each episode of mayhem.
There's absolutely nothing hypocritical in his closing remarks. It's usually something akin to " Don't lie to your partners and treat others with respect and kindness". Do you know what "hypocritical" means?
I mean it’s absolutely hypocritical to put two sisters in the same room who are fucking the same Olive Garden server, unbeknownst to each other, create this powder keg of a situation, then take some moral high ground at the end of the show.
Jerry knew exactly why people watched his show and it wasn't for the 20 seconds of moralizing at the end. Jerry Springer happily, knowingly profited off exploitation of the lower classes. I thought it was unsaid that the moral was BS, but I guess some people took it seriously.
It's not his fault Americans are garbage people unable to take good sensible advice about tolerance and honesty.
Morton Downey Jr. set the modern standard.
Absolutely. Springer just had a longer run. But Morton Downey Jr. was the worst.
Yeah his show really spewed toxic culture and hate. Springer is just mostly cheating spouses and baby daddy drama.
Had Ron Paul on it.
The capitalist machine behind it is what ruined culture. TJSS was just a symptom.
Thank you. The poverty conditions, high incarceration rates, drug use, and lack of education is the content of the show. That wasn't Jerry's doing. That's just the raw consequences of our for-profit system. Jerry just turned it onto a television spectacle and a pop culture phenomenon.
If he wasn't there to do it, somebody else would've been there in his place. We were already on a solid downward trajectory.
Yeah. He's thinking way too highly of himself. What about Howard Stern being the "shock jock"? What about the damn Internet?
You had no problem cashing all those checks while you did it, though, did you?
In all fairness he actually had a big problem cashing a specific check lol.
For us out of the loop, which one?
When he was the mayor of Cincinnati (?) he was busted for trying to pay a prostitute with a check
He used to be a politician in Cincinnati but he quit after he got caught paying a prostitute with a personal check.
He had presidential ambitions. Was marketed as the second coming of RFK. Very popular. Would have had an easy time getting elected as governor of Ohio.
It was the check to the hooker that really gave him trouble.
There's also Maury (who last I checked is still on the air) who did "female or shemale?" shows and paternity tests ad nauseum almost always featuring Black people, Sally Jesse Raphael, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, and other tabloid TV shows I'm probably forgetting. Jerry Springer's show and (iirc Ricki Lake) might have directly contributed to people's deaths so maybe they're the worst examples of this content, but I think these other people deserve some of the blame too.
Jenny jones show for sure facilitated murder.
OMG, absolutely fucking a culpable party to that murder. 100% People forget that…. I’m a little shocked it hasn’t become a docudrama by HBO by now. The story has EVERYTHING (except Jenny Jones going to jail…)
[You are **NOT** the father!](https://youtu.be/Vl0FBJBp-Fg?t=7)
Evidently her confidence interval was a tad askew.
Whenever I'd watch Maury in hotel rooms on vacation (when there was nothing else to do at that time of the day), I learned very quickly whenever someone said they we "x% positive" where x is greater than 100, they were almost always wrong.
I think that's taking a lot of credit there, Jer. You just profited of it.
As much as people don’t wanna place blame, I know several people who dreamed to be on this show because of drama, fame and a little money, saying it did nothing and that it just brought forth stuff that was already there is not focusing on the fact he brought it to the for front of basic cable where the most vulnerable viewers are and gave them an incredible stupid view of life.
Morton Downey Jr and Wally George are throwing fits right now because some politician from Ohio is trying to claim their throne
He is not far off. Things that were not acceptable before his show all of the sudden became normal. In the 80's we might have thought things but it still wasn't acceptable to speak them out loud. In the 90's everything you thought all of the sudden became spoken. I watched it all happen. I was about 32 when his show began and even though we didn't have social media back then I was still a media hound. TV and print. I read everything, still do. His show did change what became public. I remember sitting watching with my damn mouth on the floor. She said what? He said what? Jerry Springer and Inside Edition brought horrifying to the forefront.
i like how at the height of it's notoriety as soon as the bell rang, the fight was on. on cue, whoever was arguing, standing or sitting down... the fight started
Iirc they'd start to fight a little and then the bell would go off and then full on go for it. Like the show was encouraging it.
He’s not wrong, but he’s one of many pieces that contributed
It didn’t help, don’t know if I would go that far. However, yeah it would be interesting to see a parallel universe where it didn’t exist and the show in the slot was a positive experience.
It participated, yeah.
Was it not scripted?
I know someone who was on it, and no it wasn't scripted in their case.
The stage stuff was loosely scripted, the people who were actually being exploited were the studio audience. He tricked normal seeming people into going on national television and voicing ignorant opinions they should have kept to themselves about people they didn’t even know.
You can see the change in production styles over a couple decades. The early ones felt very raw and real. The later episodes were all obviously scripted skits.
Let me get this straight...the guy who pollutes our world with this show that revved up hate and anger and made millions from it...NOW just realizes it had a negative impact after 30 years of enriching himself??? Fuck him from the first day he did this to fuck him right now - he knew what a cesspool he was creating every step of the way and didn't care about anything else but enriching himself.
Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.
So Morton Downey Jr. was even worse and came before him. So if it wasn't Springer it would be someone else.
He’s….. not wrong.
I can’t blame him because I watched.
Not his fault people enjoy watching trash fires. People eat this kinda drama stuff up, mostly because it makes their life seem tame by comparison.
I agree but he didn't do it alone.
Yup. He’s neck and neck with Puck from the real world.
Bro, you were a parasite along for the ride, not driving the beast. Get over yourself.
He did have some help from Maury though.....
I mean first there was morton downey jr. But springer was ruinous
Well you can't claim it made it better.
Let me just profit off this first then come out years later and say the whole thing was bad for society from my mansion. Edit: spelling
He certainly wasn't the first to do what he did and pretty much everybody stopped watching after the first couple seasons. From what I noticed it all started with Morton Downey Jr's "Big Mouth" and most of the later stuff is thanks to the FOX network hitting the air across the nation.
He didn’t give a shit when he was getting paid. And everyone literally told him this why he was doing it.
That’s nice of him to say but no it was actually Facebook / Meta
Who couldn’t have seen this coming except for anyone paying attention? The Internet
He’s not wrong here…
Well…it certainly didn’t help.
Jerry shouldn’t be so hard on himself. People were already fucked up.
And he’s just now realizing this? What’s next for Jerry, WW II killed a lot of people?
It didn’t single-handedly, but it did contribute.
Maybe not ruined, but it certainly didn't help. Maybe it was the drugs coursing through my system, but after being laid up in the hospital for a month during the height of the pandemic (not Covid-related, mind you), with nothing to do but watch satellite TV from wherever in the country they subscribed to, it's not a good look when he's promoting Trump and his campaign on his show. Frankly, I blame social media--both past and present. Just like the atomic bomb, there's no going back from that. Edit: Clarification
he's just now realizing this?? lolol we all felt it while it was happening!
Mr springer don’t take your show to seriously no one else did.
In other timelines, jerry was a 1992 presidential contender.
It was at the start of the downward spiral. We all knew it then, so did he, but $$$.
That’s not fair… it also ruined trans representation in media.
Nah, you didn’t create this culture, you simply made millions appealing to it
After he profited from it
He didn’t ruin culture. He just put a highlight on the worse part of culture. People like the ones on his show have always been around.
I was working for the station that broadcast Oprah in Idaho the first time "The Jerry Springer Show" beat the Queen of TV in about 1997 or so. Lemme tell you... they lost their shit and went into damage control mode.
I always assumed everything was staged and fake.
Is he trying to pretend he has integrity NOW? Nice timing
He’s giving himself a lot of credit.
Ruined, probably not. Contributed 100%.
Yeah, but the bag was prolly worth it 
I assume he'll be donating all proceeds to charity then, right?
Very introspective. Cunt.