“Remembering Jerry Springer: The Success and Controversy of The Jerry Springer Show”

This Thursday, April 27, Jerry Springer passed away peacefully at his home in the suburbs of Chicago. Information reported by his press secretary to several American media, including Fox News. According to TMZ, he died after a “short illness”, which would be pancreatic cancer. “Jerry’s ability to connect with people was central to his success in everything he tried, whether it was politics, TV or just joking around with people on the street who wanted a picture or a word.“, said in particular Jene Galvin, a friend of the presenter and spokesperson for the family, on learning the sad news.

He had had tremendous success with The Jerry Springer Show, a show that started in September 1991 before stopping in 2018, only. Jerry Springer hosted the talk show for 27 years. A program in which he received anonymous people who settled their accounts with insults and punches. The show was initially a classic talk show, focused on social issues and American political life, before becoming a true symbol of American “trash TV”. Security intervened regularly to separate the people who participated in the program.

A beloved and then controversial show

At the end of the 90s, The Jerry Springer Show had the best audience for daytime programmes, ahead of Oprah, the must-see talk show from presenter Oprah Winfrey. A resounding success, followed by numerous reviews. Indeed, the show was entitled to its share of detractors. Many of them were convinced that the guests were in fact comedians. Rumors that Jerry Springer was trying to silence, swearing it was all wrong. But he was quickly overtaken by events, since he was sued by participants of his program, because of the consequences that the show had had on their daily lives.

In 2015, his name was associated with a completely different case, namely the death of his disabled sister. Indeed, a few months after the tragedy, the Los Angeles police suspected Jill Blackstone, the producer of Jerry Springer, to be at the origin of this death.