Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!”

by The Katie Black Show

America’s most beloved daytime talk show dad, Jerry Springer passed away at the age of 79.

His show, The Jerry Springer Show, first aired back in 1991. Millennials were never the same. On weekdays, sick kids home from school eagerly awaited the show’s air time. For older viewers who could not catch the daytime slot, Fox would rebroadcast the episode at night before the local news.

Throughout the 1990s, no other television show encapsulated the decade and the American spirit like the daytime talk show. At one time, The Jerry Springer Show was among at least a dozen other daytime talk shows in the country, maybe more depending on the exact year.

Most people tend to have one solid path, one career. But the public that now knows Jerry Springer, might be surprised Jerry was far more than a daytime talk show host. Before 1991, Jerry was an accomplished lawyer, the Mayor of Cincinnati in the late 1970s and finally becoming a well-known local news anchor for the city.

For the first three years, The Jerry Springer Show’s focus was geared toward important human rights interests of the time. A natural avenue combining Springer’s background in politics and his broadcasting career. But once the show hired new producer, Richard Dominick, the show flipped from what some would consider a news program into the ‘Hard Copy ’of it all. The more outrageous, the more unbelievable, the more violent, became any day ending in ‘Y ’for The Jerry Springer Show. And now, looking back what we now know as The Jerry Springer Show.

Not only were the guests and their stories eyebrow-raising but so was Jerry’s audience. They would cheer, boo, and ask to-the-point questions as if they had a right to know why the guests were engaging in the behavior they were. Some could argue the guests and the audience were one and the same, you couldn’t have one without the other.

The Jerry Springer Show ended in 2018, after 25-plus years on television with a catalog of some 4,000 episodes. But Jerry Springer didn’t disappear into the abyss. He hosted a podcast, America’s Got Talent as well as Judge Jerry from 2019-2022.

Jerry Springer would sign off every single show with, “Till next time, take care of yourself and each other, ”giving some viewers momentary amnesia about what they had just witnessed previously.

In Jerry’s Final Thought segment on his finale, he looked into the camera saying, “Deep down we are all alike…. I’ll say it again, deep down we are all the same. ”He later stated in the same bit, “I’m not better, only luckier”, choking back emotion.

The Jerry Springer Show forever changed the television landmark of storytelling and culture.

@ChrisECT on Twitter wrote, “RIP Jerry Springer. Thanks for getting me through all the days I skipped school…I mean when I was sick”.

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