What happened to Jerry Springer? How did the respected Cincinnati “boy mayor” of the 1970s, and the city’s top-rated news anchor in the 1980s, devolve into TV’s ringmaster for what TV Guide called the “Worst Show In The History Of Television?”
Netflix’s two-part Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action solves that mystery with an in-depth interview with Springer executive producer Richard Dominick, the former Weekly World tabloid writer (“Toaster Possessed By The Devil”) who decided to push the boundaries of television to reverse the Jerry Springer Show’s fatally low ratings in 1993.
“I thought the show was just terrible. It was just boring ... The vision I had was let’s take a talk show and turn it upside down. Let’s make it wild. Let’s make it sexy,” Dominick says in the fascinating behind-the-scenes look at TV’s trashiest show.
“All I had to do is convince Jerry to go with the flow and do what I wanted to do. But his dream was not this show. His dream was politics ... Jerry felt it was kind of risky ... He eventually saw that this had potential.”
Longtime Chicago media critic Robert Feder tells Netflix that Springer buying into Dominick’s vision for a sensational and confrontation show — which knocked Oprah Winfrey out of first place in the daytime ratings in 1998 — “was a bargain that really caused him to sell his soul. And I believe that every day of his life, he knew what he was doing was really beneath him, and beneath his dignity.”
The former Democratic City Council member and mayor began his TV career at WLWT-TV's 11 p.m. news commentator in 1982, after nine years on Cincinnati City Council and an unsuccessful run to be the Democrats’ candidate for governor.
The Multimedia station promoted him to main co-anchor in 1984, and three years later Channel 5’s Springer-Norma Rashid team was the Greater Cincinnati’s top-rated newscast. At the peak of their popularity in 1991, Multimedia, which produced the Phil Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael talk shows, announced that Springer would do a daytime talk show for national syndication.
Jerry Springer premiered Sept. 30, 1991, from WLWT-TV, while still the station’s main news co-anchor. He did a serious issues-oriented show with guests such as Jesse Jackson, Oliver North and Cincinnati anti-smoking crusader Ahron Leichtman.
For the second season, NBC made a deal with Multimedia to carry all three talk shows on its stations on condition that Springer move to Chicago’s NBC Tower. (The Netflix show erroneously makes it sound like Springer was launched in Chicago in fall 1992. That’s my biggest quibble with the film.)
Dominick’s dominance as the showrunner in 1993 occurred at an opportune time.
- Springer had just quit as WLWT-TV news co-anchor in January 1993, after commuting daily between Chicago and Cincinnati so he could anchor the news and deliver a nightly commentary, his true passion. That liberated him from being seen as a serious news anchor (a point not made in the documentary) to become the Trash TV Ringmaster.
- Jerry Springer’s ratings were languishing in the crowded daytime talk field. He ranked 18th not just behind Oprah Winfrey, Ricki Lake, Sally Jessy Raphael, Regis & Kathie Lee and Donahue, but also trailing Gordon Elliott, Geraldo (Rivera), Marilu Henner and Dennis Prager.
- Los Angeles and some other markets buried Springer in a late-night time period, which is how stations “burn off” a contract for a show with low ratings.
In Dominick’s view, Jerry Springer was now a “2 o’clock in the morning show” so he pushed producers to find adult themes and topics — “anything I could get away with at 2 o’clock in the morning” — even though Springer was a daytime show in Cincinnati, Dayton and many markets. So Jerry Springer shattered norms by filling daytime TV with shows called “I Refuse To Wear Clothes,” “I’m A 14-Year-Old Prostitute,” “I Cut Off My Manhood,” “I’m Pregnant By My Brother” and “I Married A Horse.”
The sharp turn into crazytown wasn’t appreciated by Dominick’s bosses, although director Luke Sewell’s Fights, Camera, Action never mentions Multimedia or subsequent Springer Show owners Studios USA and NBC Universal Television.
“They [the bosses] were kind of embarrassed and very angry. They’d call every day. They’d scream and yell at me, so I had to be the tough guy. I had to lay down the law,” Dominick boasts.
When the October 1997 “Klanfrontation” show ended in a brawl by members of the Ku Klux Klan and Jewish Defense League, that established the formula for out-of-control violence in every show. Dominick insisted shows look interesting with the sound off so people clicking through channels would say, “Holy s---! What’s that?” he explains.
The KKK show “was brilliant. It rated through the roof,” Dominick tells Netflix. “And that gave me the idea … that if you’re producing a show that you want to be insane — unlike anything that’s ever been on TV before — there’s your goal.” Longtime media critic Feder called Dominick “a diabolical genius.”
Ratings for Springer’s daytime freak circus continued to grow into 1998, when he knocked Oprah out of first place in the ratings. That ratcheted up the pressure on producers to top themselves with more violence and outrage for 200 shows (40 weeks) a year. Springer was rewarded with a $30-million contract; Dominick received a new three-year deal.
The “pressure cooker” to produce outrageous shows led producer Toby Yoshimura to book the infamous beastiality show “I Married A Horse” in May 1998, when Springer beat Oprah. But Springer’s WLWT-TV flagship, and many other stations, refused to air the show about Mark Matthews leaving his wife and daughters to live with a Shetland pony called Pixel.
“It was the most vile and disgusting freak show that’s ever been on television,” Feder said about the show featuring Matthews kissing the horse. Dominick called it “the perfect show.”
Former producers Annette Grundy, Melinda Chait Mele, Yoshimura, Dominick and Feder described to Netflix the inner workings of the show. Springer, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2023 at age 79, is seen in various interview clips (but the film doesn’t use his comments from many print interviews).
Comments from Fights, Camera, Action:
HE’S THE BOSS: Show ideas were pitched “specifically for Richard’s approval. I don’t believe Jerry understood or really much cared about the long term direction of the show. I think he was just along for the ride. Everything flowed through Richard,” Feder says.
JERRY’S WORLD: “Jerry loved being a star. He didn’t act like a star, but he loved the fact that he was … He became a cultural icon.”
VIOLENCE RULES: “Richard Dominick ... was right. There was a direct relationship between violence and ratings, because that’s what people tuned in for,” Feder says.
THE SPRINGER TRIANGLE: Seventy-five percent of Springer guests came from the “Springer Triangle” encompassing Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and parts of West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi, Yoshimura says. “Small town folks” would be encouraged to come on Springer to “tell their great story” and settle their relationship disputes “once and for all,” he says. “You rev them up to tornado level, and then you send them off stage,” Yoshimura says.
NO HELP OR COUNSELING: People would call the 1-800-96-JERRY hotline and say, “I can’t wait to meet Jerry. I really hope he can help me with this,” Chait Mele says. “But Jerry didn’t help anybody with any of it. He just stood there (in the audience).”
After guests were flown home, the show did not keep in touch with them or offer any counseling, according to the film. “They weren’t interested in what kind of impact it was gonna have on you,” says one former guest, even though an appearance on Springer “might have changed their lives for the worse forever,” Feder says.
JERRY’S APPEAL: The second hour recounts how Springer was caught sleeping with a porn star who had appeared on his show in 1998, which could have ended the show, Yoshimura says. “It just sort of fizzled out. The audience didn’t care,” he says.
NO FAKE: Chait Mele says she was fired after being duped into booking a fake love triangle show. “I should have known better, to be honest. They were from Boston.” The documentary includes an Extra clip with about 15 people saying they “rehearsed” their Springer segments — but it doesn’t explore the fakery further.
THE ‘TALK SHOW MURDER’: One third of the second film is devoted to the 2000 murder of Nancy Campbell-Panitz in Sarasota, Fla., after she appeared earlier that day on Springer with her ex-husband, Ralf Panitz, and his new wife in a show called “Secret Mistresses Confronted.”
Her son Jeffrey Campbell blames the show for her death. “I wish I could go back and say to her, ‘Don’t do it’ ... She was basically lied to.” He claims his mother was invited on the show to reconcile with her ex, not knowing he had married Eleanor. However, after the May taping, they reunited for two turbulent months. He kicked Nancy out of the house; she got a restraining order against him. After Ralf watched their episode in a bar on July 24, 2000, he went to her house and choked her to death. He was convicted of murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
The judge said Nancy, Ralf and Eleanor were “manipulated by the show to increase their humiliation. It was reprehensible,” according to the documentary. In file news video Springer says, “It was a very, very sad event, but it had nothing to do with the show.”
TONED DOWN: Dominick tells Fights, Camera, Action that after the Panitz murder in 2000, he was told to eliminate nudity, complaints about the show and “bad press.” He says the show “never really recovered.” However, it remained on the air 18 more seasons, until 2018. And Springer told me in 2011, for the show's 20th anniversary, that his NBC Universal contract required him to do shows "outside the social norm ... We are not allowed to do warm, uplifting topics," he said.
Dominick also produced Springer’s Ringmaster movie in 1998, The Springer Hustle series for VH1 in 2006 and the Jerry Springer: Too Hot For TV! videos. He left Springer in 2008 after creating and producing the spinoff Steve Wilkos Show in 2007. He also created and produced Hardcore Pawn for Tru TV (2010-15).
Springer was canceled after 27 seasons in 2018. A postscript on the Netflix series says his estimated worth was $60 million.
FINAL THOUGHT: “Jerry and Richard were on top of the world. The riches that it gave them, and the fame, were very compelling,” Feder says. “But what did they have to do in order to achieve it? I mean, the degree to which Jerry sold himself out, and the degree to which he was complicit with Richard, in exploiting people who came on the show ... To say that Richard corrupted him I think absolved Jerry of too much responsibility.”
