Jerry Springer dies at 79

Talk show host left legacy – for better or worse

Jerry Springer, who had quite an interesting career path, died Thursday morning in his suburban Chicago home after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 79. 

Though he was a lawyer, the mayor of Cincinnati, a news anchor, and a radio talk show host, Springer will be best known for his raucous daytime talk show, which lasted for 27 years until its end in 2018.

Springer was born in England and came to the United States when he was four and settled in the Queens borough of New York City in 1944. He graduated from Tulane University and received his law degree at the Northwest University Law School. He eventually moved to Cincinnati to practice law and was elected to the city council in 1971, being forced to resign three years later due to sending a check to a prostitute but in a surprise, was re-elected in a 1975 election and became mayor in 1977.

Springer then segued into local news, becoming a political reporter and later anchored Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT’s newscasts from 1987 to 1992, with the station surging from third place to first. A key component in his time at WLWT was his “Final Thought” commentaries, which he transported to his talk show. In 1991, WLWT owner Multimedia, Inc. saw something in Springer as the next Phil Donahue (a show Multimedia also produced) and gave him a daily talk show shot at the station and distributed by its subsidiary Multimedia Entertainment. The show began with only four stations in its lineup with a completely different format than the one it would later adopt and once had Rev. Jesse Jackson and Oliver North as guests. 

In 1992, the show moved to Chicago where it would be taped at NBC Tower, home of WMAQ-TV as part of a deal Multimedia struck with NBC’s owned stations to air Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael. Springer was facing cancellation in early 1994, so executive producer Burt DuBrow was replaced by Richard Dominick, who introduced sleazy elements – even though it would repel advertisers, who had their fill of such nonsense with Geraldo and The Morton Downey Jr. Show in the late 1980s. 

It worked, even surviving a flood of talk shows coming into the market in 1995, mainly Ricki Lake-type clones. Fights became a daily staple by then and in February 1998, topped Oprah to become the highest-rated talk show in America. This example below came from an October 1997 show reminiscent of Geraldo’s neo-Nazi brawl from nearly ten years earlier (viewer discretion is advised): 

In April 1997, WMAQ management, led by general manager Lyle Banks and news director Joel Cheatwood (who would achieve notoriety for creating a tabloid news format at WSVN Miami), convinced Springer – who delivered those commentaries for WLWT Cincinnati, to do the same thing for their station. It caused a revolt in the newsroom, leading to the resignation of Ron Magers and Carol Marin (I wrote about this in 2007 on the tenth anniversary of what happened.) Springer lasted only two nights as a year later due to boycotts from community leaders, WMAQ dropped Springer’s show – only to be picked up by Fox-owned WFLD (there’s more information on his 1997 and 1998 controversies in the 2018 piece I wrote when Springer’s show ended its run.) 

In 1999, Springer testified in front of the Chicago City Council – a place where dysfunction was a trademark – on whether the fights and chair-throwing on his show were real. Nothing really came out of it. 

As the show sept into the background in the 2000s, Springer appeared on other shows, including being a panelist on America’s Got Talent and appeared as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars and The Masked Singer not to mention making appearances on Roseanne, Married… With Children, The Wayans Bros., and in animated form on The Simpsons. 

After his show wrapped in 2018, he began a new career as Judge Jerry in 2019, mediating cases in a courtroom setting. The show was canceled after three seasons, though it’s still on in reruns.  

Despite NBCUniversal his show moving to Connecticut in 2009, Springer maintained ties in the Chicago area. There’s no doubt he loved the city (he was also a front-court fixture at Bulls games during their championship years) as he’s never said a bad thing about the city we call home – unlike a former President of the United States, an entire political party, and an entire cable news network. Despite his show being trash, Jerry Springer was a down-to-earth, kind human being who would take time out to meet fans or talking to people. Springer’s show continues in reruns for the foreseeable future, in broadcast syndication, and on FAST channel Nosey, if you want to see what the hype was all about – a hype Springer himself didn’t understand. 

It’s odd given the divided times we’re in, we’ve never heeded the advice he would give at the end of every show.

“Take care of yourself…and each other.”