A look at the show that put ratings before the dignity of human life
The Jerry Springer Show ran for 27 seasons, debuting on September 30, 1991, and ending on July 26, 2018. In total, the NBC-produced show broadcast 3,891 episodes, beating Oprah in the ratings war and delighting TV and studio audiences who couldn’t get enough of the programme that cared more about viewing figures than the dignity of human life.
In truth, the programme should have ended much earlier. While it was a fairly respectful programme at first, with a traditional talk show format, it later reformatted into sensationalist tabloid ‘entertainment’ that many have equated to the freak shows or gladiatorial battle arenas that were prevalent during Victorian and Roman times.
The new Netflix documentary, “Jerry Springer, Fights, Camera, Action,” takes a look back at The Jerry Springer Show and features interviews with some of the show’s producers who talk about their role in making the show so popular. Chief among these is Richard Dominick, a former tabloid news editor whose credibility vanishes when we learn he once wrote a story about a demon-possessed toaster! He carried his trashy sensibilities into The Jerry Springer Show and made it the number-one show on American television, despite the ensuing carnage it wreaked both on and off camera.
Thanks to Dominick’s involvement on the programme, what once was a show featuring heartwarming reunions with long-lost family members and political debate became a platform for scantily clad guests showing their breasts, a literal battleground between agitated guests, and such controversial topics as incest and bestiality.
Not every scandalous episode from the show’s run is given a mention in the doc – there are far too many to count – but it does include footage of some of the programme’s most memorable moments, including a punch-up between the Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defence League, a conversation with a brother and a sister who had sexual relations, and a kissing scene between a man and his wife, who just so happened to be a Shetland Pony named Pixel!
Such moments secured the programme a place in TV history but looking back on it now, it’s a wonder that it was ever allowed to air. Of course, the same could be said of the show’s UK equivalent, The Jeremy Kyle Show – you can read more about my thoughts on that programme here – but in the 90s and 2010s, studios cared more for ratings than the harm they were potentially doing to the guests that appeared on their scandalous shows.
One such guest was Nancy Campbell-Panitz, a woman who was murdered by her former husband Ralf Panitz in July 2000, just a few months after they appeared on the show together in an episode titled “Secret Mistresses Confronted.” Nancy, who was keen to win Ralf back from his new lover, was lured onto the show under false pretences by the show’s producers. Shockingly, these producers also denied her airfare home because she refused to engage in a physical fight with her love rival!
Jerry Springer denied the notion that his show may have contributed to Nancy’s death. But her son Jeffrey, who is interviewed in the documentary, disagrees. You will have your own viewpoint, but one thing’s for sure, if Nancy, like many of the other guests who appeared on the show, had received proper aftercare and counselling, she might have moved on in her life, away from the man who was allegedly a domestic abuser.
“It’s just a television show,” says Jerry Springer in the footage we see of a city council hearing in which he came under fire about the programme’s content. “We will all survive it,” he tells his critical listeners. But Nancy didn’t survive it. And neither did Mark Matthews, the Missouri man who married his pony and died from hepatitis as a result of the sexual intercourse he had with the animal (source). Sure, Mark’s story was crazy and for some members of the studio audience, funny and weirdly compelling. But he clearly had a mental problem that should have been dealt with through counselling – something the show never provided.
The show’s cancellation couldn’t have come soon enough, though Richard Dominick disagrees. As we hear in his interview, he still refuses to take any blame for his involvement in the misery heaped on some of the programme’s guests. It would appear that the late Jerry Springer refused to be held accountable too, as we discover via archival footage.
The Netflix doc sheds a dark spotlight on the show’s murky history but it could have gone deeper. Interviews with the show’s former guests would have been welcome, or perhaps more conversations with the friends and family members of the people whose lives were negatively impacted after appearing on the programme.
Despite this oversight, the documentary is still an interesting and sometimes sobering look at one of the most popular and morally repugnant shows seen on American TV. Watch it and be glad that its like will never be seen again. Here’s hoping, anyway.
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Verdict - 7.5/10
7.5/10