From 1997: Jerry Springer’s talk show thrives by dealing with the ‘underbelly of America,’ says an ex-producer

This story was originally published on September 21, 1997.

CHICAGO — Jerry Springer walks stiff-legged around the office in his black Armani suit, swinging a baseball bat and staring at nothing.

This is not a middle-aged man reliving his childhood fantasy of playing center field for the Yankees. He’s a man lost in thought, his mind buzzing over the guests he will interview on his talk show, which starts taping in five minutes: Donny, Dea, Christopher, Kristen, Tim, Sheryl, Teri and the Rev. Burridge.

Springer puts down the bat and walks down the hall into the studio.

Today on Jerry Springer: “My Teen Worships Satan.”

Jerry Springer is one of America’s fastest-rising talk shows, and certainly one of America’s most outrageous (sample topics: “My Sister Stole My Husband,” “I Cut Off My Manhood,” and “My Boyfriend Is a Girl”).

» READ MORE: Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor whose namesake TV show unleashed chaos on weekday afternoons, has died at 79

Perhaps it’s sheer coincidence that while Oprah Winfrey and even Geraldo Rivera have toned down their shows, it’s the Springer ratings that are up 30 percent this year.

In Philadelphia last season, Springer aired in the graveyard — 10 o’clock weeknights on WPSG-TV (Channel 57). Still, night after night, two out of every 25 TV sets in use were tuned in to the show — an impressive 8.0 share, in the parlance of the business.

Emboldened by the numbers, Springer’s syndicate reportedly doubled the price in Philadelphia, and Channel 57 let it go. WCAU-TV (Channel 10) picked it up and moved it into talk-show prime time — 10 a.m., opposite the new Martha Stewart show on KYW-TV and AM Live on WPVI-TV. In Springer’s first three weeks, Channel 10 says its ratings at 10 a.m. have risen 50 percent. WCAU is bringing Springer to town Thursday and Friday to do promotions.

The lights come up, and the show begins

Dea, a woman in a lilac pantsuit, sits on stage. She’s terrified of Donny, her devil-worshiping son, whom she calls a “ticking time bomb.” He has threatened to cut her while she sleeps, so she keeps a gun under her pillow. The crowd moans in sympathy.

Donny strolls out and sits down. Black lines are drawn in makeup on his face, and there is an X on his forehead. He wears dark glasses, black clothes and a scowl. The crowd hisses.

Donny, 19, tells of an abusive childhood. Springer tries to get him to forgive his mother and to move on. “I hate Christians,” he replies.

It’s easy to separate Jerry Springer the show from Jerry Springer the man.

The show, where Springer plays the role of Adult, is a place where strippers, transsexuals, deadbeat parents, saucy children, love’s losers, and combinations thereof sound off in front of an overheated, overwhelmingly young audience.

The man, by comparison, is a likable 53-year-old son of Polish Holocaust survivors, a former lawyer and Cincinnati mayor who lives in a Chicago high-rise with his 21-year-old daughter. The word is that he’s separated, but he refuses to talk much about his private life, except for being investigated at age 30 for sleeping with a prostitute. (He was reelected anyway.)

“I wouldn’t want to be a guest on our show,” he says, reveling in the irony.

He does take his work seriously. But viewers shouldn’t.

“I’m a reasonably bright human being who does a silly show,” he says with a shrug. “There’s room for all kinds of television. It’s just like our real lives. You can be talking to your kids’ teachers in the afternoon and at night you could be having a conversation about Madonna. We all have our silly sides and our serious sides. Same with our show. This show is entertainment.”

“We’re entertaining ourselves to death,” counters Vicki Abt, a sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University and one of the more vocal critics of talk shows. “What’s interesting to the public is not necessarily in the public interest.”

Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV Talk Show, which Abt wrote with Penn State professor Leonard Mustazza, says the current crop of talk shows makes the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s seem tame by comparison.

“It used to be a special occasion to see a freak show at a carnival,” she says in a phone interview. “But now it’s 24 hours a day. They’re so horribly deconstructive of all the safeguards that society has put in place over some 25,000 years of civilization.”

Springer argues that talk shows have merely updated the backyard-fence paradigm of gossip about people and their relationships.

Abt scoffs: “There are no repercussions in the pseudo-community of talk shows for being a peeping Tom, a voyeur or a gossip. In the real world, if you get that label, there are consequences. . . . My students have come to look at this as reality.”

This too shall pass, she says. “The shows will die a natural death, but the next genre may be even worse.”

Springer also knows that nothing is permanent. He says he’d like to do a sitcom someday, or perhaps teach political science. Meanwhile, he is committed to the show through 2002.

Back from commercial, Donny the aspiring satanist glowers. His mother weeps. Springer brings out Donny’s brother, Christopher, who tells Donny, “I won’t tell you to go to hell - go to heaven.” Then Springer brings out Kristen the devil priestess, whose big black hair matches her black outfit. She salutes, and informs the mother that she has every intention of building a satanic temple. (The town, like the guests’ last names, is never identified.) Tim, Kristen’s husband, comes out.

Donny tells his mother that he’s been baptized into the satanic church. Springer has proof. “This is scary stuff,” he warns. A videotape — shot by Springer’s crew — depicts Kristen inducting Donny into satanism.

In her chair, watching the tape on a monitor, Dea cries.

Are these people for real?

That is the question Springer gets the most. Yes, he says. Each week, 5,000 people call in with story ideas.

“We’re looking for stories about relationships,” says Rachelle Consiglio, 26, the show’s senior producer. “The truth is, any one of us could be a show. People say, `Oh, right.’ But if you look, everybody’s got something, but most of us wouldn’t be willing to talk about it.”

Interesting leads are followed up and verified — birth certificates are examined, family photos are checked, other people are called to corroborate, she says. “We’d rather ditch a story than go with something that’s not true.”

Guests sign a form stipulating that if they lie, they must pay production costs of $80,000, plus damages. On a show last year, a husband confessed to his wife about an affair with their baby-sitter; the couple turned out to be members of a Canadian comedy troupe who were dimed out later by friends. The show went after the hoaxsters, and the case was settled out of court.

The other often-asked question: Does Springer pay the guests? No, says Consiglio, though the show pays to fly them in, put them up in a hotel, and feed them.

Consiglio is proud of the serious subjects that Springer occasionally handles, including a look at the first female chain gang. “It helps you see things in a whole different light,” she says. “I wanted women to think, `They’re just like me.’”

Donny’s cousin Sheryl comes out. On her way to her seat, she douses Kristen the devil woman with holy water. The crowd goes crazy. Sheryl warns Kristen and Tim that if they build a temple, she’ll burn it down. Another video rolls. It shows satanists burning a model of a church.

Springer didn’t set out to be America’s king of sluts and nuts. After two terms as Cincinnati’s mayor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he became a respected television anchor and commentator. He was the top draw in town. He also was under contract. One day in 1991, his boss took him to lunch and assigned him to host a local talk show in addition to his commentator’s role.

The show was not especially flashy. Sample topic: “Grandparents Raising Grandkids.” Springer seemed to be destined to become another asterisk in the talk-show trivia books, after Stephanie Miller and Charles Perez and before Carnie Wilson and Mark Wahlberg.

In 1992, the show was moved to Chicago, ostensibly to draw better guests. Springer commuted daily.

When Joy Roller arrived as a Springer producer in August 1992, a veteran of shows such as People Are Talking, she was told to develop shows around relationships. She says she got a quick lesson in just what kind of relationships her superiors wanted: “the underbelly of America.”

“By showing the spotlight on the dark side of America, [they] promote it and legitimize the negative behavior in our society,” she says.

Within two weeks, she says, she demanded to get out of her one-year contract. She remained for four months.

Talk-show producers are a mobile bunch. The cast at Springer — mainly quick-thinking Type A personalities in their 20s — is no exception.

“I’m lucky,” Roller says. “I’ve been able to make the transition to a credible job.” She is a vice president at the WidmeyerBaker Group in Washington, which produces public policy-oriented television shows.

By the time Roller left, the show still wasn’t exactly gangbusters. In early 1994, shortly after giving up his commentator’s job and moving to Chicago full time, Springer promoted producer Richard Dominick to executive producer. Dominick’s resume includes comedy writing for Jay Leno and Dennis Miller and writing about three-headed babies and other curiosities as a staffer for the supermarket tabs Weekly World News and the Sun.

Right away, Dominick positioned Springer toward the college crowd, and watched ratings soar.

“When Jerry first came along, he was supposed to be the second Phil Donahue,” says Dominick. “He became the first Jerry Springer.”

Springer apparently has paid a price. When he was asked to do news commentaries on a Chicago television station earlier this year, an anchorwoman quit. Springer himself gave it up after a week because of the controversy. “I work hard and try to do a good job,” Springer says. “Criticism hurts, but who am I going to cry to?”

Teri, Donny’s girlfriend, comes out. She says that she’s a Christian, and that she and Donny are in love. She tells Dea that if she were a real Christian, she wouldn’t have kicked Donny out. A man walks out. He’s the Rev. Burridge. He is wearing a talas, the Jewish prayer shawl, a skullcap and a large Star of David. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I claim you!” he bellows at Kristen and Tim. Kristen raises her middle finger. Springer shoos the guests offstage, except for Dea and Donny. He tries to bring them together but fails.

Each show ends with Springer’s “Final Thought,” a short commentary he writes.

“It’s easy to dismiss these folks as loony tunes — certainly misguided, more weird than dangerous, certainly unappreciative of this life granted by God. And yet there’s a common strain that seems to run through those who wind up in this state, and that is a feeling of rejection early in life . . . a feeling of being unloved and unwanted. . . . They claim to have been treated badly by Christians. Oh, garbage. Don’t blame it on God. Life’s full of bad breaks. But God gave humans a mind and the ability to make choices. . . . This pitiful performance of devil worship is simply a sign of weakness. . . . If they feel rejected, the problem is not looking at God, but looking in the mirror.

“Till next time, take care of yourself — and each other.”

This story was originally published on September 21, 1997.