Jerry Springer

The news dropped yesterday morning that prolific television personality Jerry Springer passed away. You might have known him for the television show named after him, but he was more than that. He was more than the trash television that everyone held him up as the standard of. His passing leaves behind a long legacy of television and film work, as well as a landscape of productions inspired by the work he did.

Most people know the Jerry Springer show. They know that he would bring on people who were normally looked down upon and used them to facilitate a bunch of drama based on cheating, lying, and throwing chairs. Fights would break out regularly. Security would frequently step in to pull people off one another. It was the mayhem of the lower class, funnelled through the container of Jerry Springer. Audiences ate it up.

Now, if one show was all that Jerry Springer did, people probably wouldn’t think of him as fondly as they do. Sure, it was a massive, long-lasting show. That’s true. But it was the way he approached the show that made Jerry Springer more than the bringer of trash television. He was the facilitator of the mayhem, but he didn’t egg it on. He came at it from a place of reason. He was the straight man to the lunacy that occurred on stage. There was no fighting for Jerry Springer, just fighting in front of him.

This idea was furthered by the movie Ringmaster, which was a fictionalized version of putting together an episode of Jerry Springer. It followed the people who would be on the show, with a little bit of following the Jerry Springer surrogate, played by Jerry Springer. In the end, Jerry mentioned that his show was about shining a light on the stories of people that society would rather brush aside than pay attention to. And, in a way, I kind of believed him. Sure, Jerry Springer was a tabloid show meant to entertain through shock value. But it also showed a side of American society that, at that time, was often ignored in entertainment. Jerry Springer was shining a light on those people, giving them their moment of stardom, even if that moment likely had a negative impact on them.

Later in the run of Jerry Springer, one of his security guards, Steve Wilkos, got his own television show. The Steve Wilkos Show is still running, which goes to show the lasting impact of Jerry Springer. Not only did Jerry Springer’s show go for nearly three decades with a successful string of direct-to-video releases of unrated cuts of episodes, but The Steve Wilkos Show spun off in 2007 and is still running. That’s a long-lasting franchise that hasn’t shown any signs of stopping, beyond Jerry Springer being cancelled and Jerry Springer dying.

The other way Jerry Springer left a lasting impact was in the material shown on the show. Infidelity was a major topic. Incest came into play. These kinds of stories ushered in a bunch of shock-value television and, kind of, paved the way for the reality show boom. Jerry Springer and Maury grew into these types of shows at the same time. They set the stage for things like the Attitude Era of WWE, South Park, or reality shows like The Real Housewives. I know that one is about wealthy people. The infighting on those shows took a lot from the fighting that happened on the Jerry Springer stage. Audiences are watching the same drama in a different package. The television landscape was partially shaped by what Jerry Springer did with his show.

He wasn’t just the host of a tabloid-style show, though. There was more to Jerry Springer than his show. He was a news broadcaster. He was a politician who was, for a year, the mayor of Cincinnati. He hosted other shows like America’s Got Talent and Judge Jerry. He was featured in The Masked Singer. Jerry Springer did a lot of things during his life. Every single one had an impact.

Jerry also wasn’t without his scandals. During his time as a politician, he was forced to resign from a position because he solicited a prostitute. Sex work is taboo now, but it was much tabooer (weird word) in the 1970s. He performed political stunts to make his stances on issues clear. At one point, he spent a night in jail just so he could understand the prisoners better. When he ran for governor of Ohio, Jerry’s political campaign poked fun at his own prostitution scandal. The guy left an impact in whatever work he did.

Now, I don’t have any major emotional connection to Jerry Springer in the sense of being a fan or not being a fan. All I know is that he was a part of my life my whole life. Whether it was seeing clips from his show during a day home from school, or watching America’s Got Talent when he hosted it, or seeing his mask taken off during The Masked Singer, he was there. He was a presence that I knew my whole life. He was a piece of my life. And now that piece is gone. I’m not sad that he won’t be making any more Jerry Springer or Judge Jerry. Those shows were done. I never really watched them, aside from the aforementioned clips while home from school.

However, his legacy will live on. The work that was inspired, partially, by his trailblazing tabloid show is infinite. People saw what he was doing. It helped them create their own ideas. Without Jerry Springer, the entire entertainment landscape would be different. Would someone else have eventually travelled down the same path? Yeah. It would have happened, regardless of Jerry Springer being there or not. But would anyone have done it the same way he did? Not at all. His life before the show informed how he tackled the show. And, see, that personal touch is what made Jerry Springer outlast many of the similar shows that came in the wake of his. He was someone special.