One of the biggest pop culture staples of the late 90s was The Jerry Springer Show. It brought forth the popularity of guilty pleasure, trash television as outrageous guests talk without filters, argue with the audience and each other, and eventually get into fist fights. The show itself made cameo appearances in other mediums, like a segment in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me where Dr. Evil returns and eventually gets into a fight with another guest. Chances are, you probably chanted his name at one point, following suit as the audience cheer him on as the shit hits the fan on his show.
Variety now reports that the famed host has passed at the age of 79. Springer started as a former Cincinnati news anchor and mayor before he found a place on daytime television. Springer is said to have died peacefully at his home in the Chicago suburbs on Thursday. There are yet to be details on the cause of death. He is survived by his wife, Micki Velton, to whom he had been married since 1973, and a daughter, Katie.
Springer would sign on to do a talk show at a time Oprah Winfrey, Donahue, Geraldo, Maury Povich, and others continued their journalism career through a talk show format. These shows would deal with interesting relationships between people or shine a light on a life struggle that not many are exposed to. The Jerry Springer Show started as a traditional talk show, but when the guests’ situations would get consistently more outrageous, it leaned far into the stranger-than-fiction issues that became shock entertainment. It became a precursor to docuseries shows that focus on a rare but extreme human struggle, as well as colorful personalities that leave much to be desired in normal social behavior.
Springer was able to even parlay the show’s popularity into a movie inspired by it, with Ringmaster, a fictional film, but sharing the title with Springer’s own autobiography. Both were released at the height of his popularity in 1998. In May 2008, Springer delivered the commencement address at his alma mater, the Northwestern University School of Law, which many thought was a controversial choice of speaker. but he would earn a standing ovation from about half the audience, and reviews of the speech were generally positive. His speech included a declaration, “I am not superior to the people on my show, and you are not superior to the people you will represent. That is not an insult. It is merely an understanding derived from a life spent on the front lines of human interaction.”