A man who married a horse, a woman who cut off her own legs and a white supremacist enter a TV studio. No, that’s not the start of a terrible joke, but a standard line-up for The Jerry Springer Show, one of the most controversial ‘talk’ shows in TV history.
Running for 27 series from 1991, the programme shocked U.S. audiences with its episodes featuring incest, dominatrices and fistfights – to name but a few of its many bizarre talking points.
With its conveyor belt of dysfunctional guests discussing their outlandish problems in front of Jerry Springer himself and a live audience, the show quickly gained notoriety – and extreme popularity.
At its peak in 1998, it had more than eight million viewers – briefly toppling Oprah Winfrey’s flagship programme to become the most watched talk show in America.
It went on to spawn reality TV copycats across the globe, including the UK’s infamous Jeremy Kyle Show.
But, after almost 4,000 episodes, NBCUniversal halted production of The Jerry Springer Show in 2018 – though it lived on through re-runs and daily episode updates to its YouTube page.
Now, that legacy faces fresh scrutiny, thanks to a new Netflix documentary which airs next week.
Speaking out for the first time, producers say that vulnerable guests were manipulated and ‘Springered’, that the job left them ‘broken’, and compared the show to the notorious Stanford prison experiment of 1971, in which students at California’s Stanford University were made to act out being prisoners and warders in a study of power and authority which had to be stopped after a string of mental breakdowns and incidents of sadism.
At its peak, The Jerry Springer Show had more than eight million viewers – briefly toppling Oprah Winfrey’s flagship programme in the US
So how did this tabloid programme become such a byword for TV toxicity – accused of promoting exploitation, discrimination and even murder?
After all, when the show premiered in September 1991, its premise was as a traditional talk show focusing on political issues.
Springer, then a 47-year-old trained lawyer, had already had a prestigious career in local politics – serving as the mayor of Cincinnati from 1977 to 1978 – and went on to win ten regional Emmy Awards as a local news anchor. However he harboured dreams of becoming a political reporter – with early episodes of his eponymous show focusing on issues such as homelessness and gun violence.
But the format failed to draw in viewers and was demoted to a 2am slot on NBC. After three years – with the programme on the verge of being cancelled – producer Richard Dominick was brought in to turn things around. ‘When I took over the show and became executive producer, the vision I had was to take a talk show and turn it upside down,’ he tells the Netflix documentary Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action.
‘Let’s make it wild and sexy. That’s what I was known for. All I had to do was convince Jerry to go with the flow and do what I wanted. It was about getting people to stop when they were flicking through the channels. Anything I could get away with at two in the morning.’
At that point, Dominick was better known as a tabloid journalist whose headlines had included ‘My Toaster Is Possessed By The Devil’ and ‘I Was Bigfoot’s Love Slave’.
Asked at the time where he’d draw the line, he replied: ‘There is no line to draw. If I could kill someone on television, I would execute them on television.’
The episodes that followed sparked outrage – not least among the show’s bosses. Guests included a porn star who slept with 251 men in ten hours (almost tame, perhaps, by today’s OnlyFans standards). Another segment included a 5st baby.
One episode saw a ‘debate’ between members of the white supremacy group the Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defence League descend into a physical brawl
‘The bosses were embarrassed and very angry. They’d call every day and scream and yell at me,’ Dominick told the documentary.
But success – and a coveted daytime show – followed. Still, the programme’s slide into ‘trash TV’ had only just begun.
Nudity, foul language and a clanging bell that indicated it was ‘fight time’ became staples – while sound-effects of a mooing cow would be played when a larger woman walked on to the stage.
The audience lapped it up – booing, chanting Springer’s name and even joining in when fights broke out.
One 1997 episode saw a ‘debate’ between members of the white supremacy group the Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defence League descend into a physical brawl – with many of the audience getting involved. Critics were disgusted by the episode, calling it a ‘vulgarity circus’. But, for Dominick, it was a turning point.
‘It was brilliant. It rated through the roof,’ he told the documentary. ‘Once that had happened I never did anything that didn’t involve confrontation.’
And the novelty only became more lurid. In a now-banned 1998 episode, Springer interviewed three people who were in so-called ‘interspecies relationships’ –aka relationships with animals.
The most memorable of the trio was a man from Missouri called Mark, who claimed he had married a pony named Pixel.
Kissing the horse on the mouth, he sobbed through tears as he insisted their marriage was consensual and that: ‘If she didn’t like it, she could always leave.’ What’s more, he revealed that he was dying from hepatitis – contracted by having sex with her.
Producer Richard Dominick was brought in to turn around the failing show and proclaimed: ‘Let’s make it wild and sexy!’ he tells the new Netflix documentary Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action.
As the scandals grew, so did the ratings – and, in turn, the profiles of Dominick and Springer.
‘Richard and Jerry were on top of the world. The riches and fame [the show] gave them were very compelling,’ media critic Robert Feder tells the documentary.
‘Everything flowed through Richard. He was the Svengali who controlled the show and the producers, and whispered in Jerry’s ear.
‘When the KKK came on – I’m not sure Jerry knew what he was getting involved in. It was a talk show that had very little talking. It was about the yelling and the fighting.’
But, after only eight years on air, questions began to swirl about the show’s dark underbelly – and how far-reaching that depravity was.
In 1999, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for sexually abusing his eight-year-old half-sister in Florida. Asked by police where he learned about incest, he replied: ‘I watched The Jerry Springer Show.’
Eleanor Panitz (centre) accused her husband Ralf’s (seated left) ex-wife Nancy of stalking them and encouraged the studio audience to call her ‘fat’ and ‘old’. Nancy was found murdered the day the episode aired.
Guests were paraded for their bizarre behaviour, such as Sandra who told the show in 2006 that she had sawn off her own legs after deciding at the age of 14 that she wanted to ‘get rid of them’.
Springer was duly summoned to a hearing at Chicago City Council to discuss the programme’s influence – particularly when it came to endorsing violence.
‘If I thought for one second my show would be hurtful to society, I wouldn’t do it,’ a rather puritanical Springer replied.
But, still, the controversies continued.
A year later, Ralf Panitz, his new bride Eleanor and ex-wife Nancy appeared on The Jerry Springer Show.
The couple claimed that Nancy had been stalking them, painted a picture of her as a ‘jealous’ ex-wife and encouraged the audience to call her ‘fat’ and ‘old’.
But, just hours after the episode aired, Nancy was beaten to death in her Florida home. Her ex-husband – who, it emerged, she had previously accused of domestic abuse – pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder.
For Nancy’s son Jeffrey Campbell, the show was firmly to blame.
In a lawsuit he filed against Springer and the show’s production team, Campbell claimed the programme had created ‘a mood that led to murder’. He told the documentary: ‘I just wish I could go back and tell my mother: “Don’t do it.” She had no idea what she was walking into.
‘No one from the show contacted her to check on her to see where she was or what happened or where she went.
‘I was told someone had choked her, pushed her down on the floor and stomped on her head, that was her cause of death.
‘The show didn’t take any responsibility for any part of it.’
The show went on to be named the ‘worst of all time’ by the industry bible TV Guide – but not before it was renewed for another five years, awarding Springer a $30 million contract (£23 million) in the process.
Although the show slowly declined in popularity over the next 16 years, it continued to make lurid headlines.
There was the wheelchair user named Sandra who told the show in 2006 that she had sawn off her own legs after deciding at the age of 14 that she wanted to ‘get rid of them’.
Then, six years later, there was the mother and daughter who admitted they were a dominatrix duo – women who dominate men during sexual activities.
They went on to bring their sex slave out on stage where he was berated by the audience – and his shocked wife.
The outlandish guests prompted critics to accuse the show of fakery – claims that Springer strongly denied.
‘I’d say it was 98 per cent real,’ he insisted before his death in 2023, adding that guests weren’t paid to go on the show but that their travel, hotel and meal costs were covered.
The more lurid the tale, the bigger the ratings – cue Mark from Missouri, who claimed he had ‘married’ and had sex with his pony
Campaigners regularly held protests outside the NBC offices, arguing that the show had ‘corrupted American society’ and was taking advantage of ‘vulnerable’ guests – many of whom were under-educated, low-paid and came from the so-called Springer triangle between Tennessee, Ohio and Georgia.
Indeed, speaking out for the first time, producer Toby Yoshimura tells the documentary he was left ‘broken’ by his experience on the show and the manipulative tactics used on those involved in it.
Yoshimura, who worked on the programme for 16 years, added: ‘We’d live in the office, six days and nights a week doing 14-hour days. And that pressure cooker was really difficult, there are some stories that went too far.
‘It’s called being Springered, you’re being produced. You had to reach into their brain and tap on the thing that would make them laugh, cry, scream or fight.’
Comparing it to the notorious Stanford prison experiment, he added: ‘You were playing with people’s psyche until you got a result.
‘We started to push the needle ever so slightly towards the red.
‘Teeth were knocked out, some people lost literally chunks of their scalp. Women would pull their nails off – their fake nail and their real nail. We had to get them to the hospital to be surgically repaired.’
He claimed that he began to use alcohol and cocaine as coping mechanisms.
‘I’d sober up and do my show and then crawl back into a bottle. Then the tequila stopped working and cocaine right on the heels of it. I then quit. I was broken.’
By 2018 – tarnished by claims of the toxic culture and dwindling audience numbers – The Jerry Springer Show was finally axed.
Yet many feel its influence lives on – perhaps even in the election of Donald Trump as President.
‘There’s no question, the behaviour of some of the people on the show is exactly Donald Trump,’ Springer himself said in 2022.
‘The reason there’s more respect given to the people who were on my show is they have enough sense not to run for president.’
Of course no one expects most modern television programmes to uphold the famously high-minded Reithian values on which the BBC was founded.
But it is hard not to conclude that at least some of the blame for the coarsening of TV shows – from live sex on screen in Love Island, to the total nudity of Naked Attraction, the crass conflicts of Big Brother, and widespread swearing and violence in mainstream drama – can be laid at the feet of The Jerry Springer Show.
In that sense, it was not just the contestants who paid a heavy price for the relentless and cynical pursuit of ratings above all else.
When Springer died at the age of 79 – with a net worth of $75 million (£59 million) – he remained a chequered figure. So strong was the controversy surrounding him that protesters proclaimed they were ‘not sad’ that he had died from pancreatic cancer.
It was a verdict, perhaps, that would not have surprised the one-time political dreamer. ‘I would like to frankly apologise for everything I have done on television,’ Springer said when the show was shut down.
‘I have ruined the culture. I hope Hell isn’t that hot, I burn easy. I hope you pray for me because if I get to Heaven, you’re all going.’
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action premieres on Netflix on Tuesday, January 7.