TV & Radio

Talk show host Jerry Springer dies aged 79

Broadcaster was best known for The Jerry Springer Show, which ran from 1991 until 2019

Talkshow host Jerry Springer in London in July 2009. He died on Thursday, April 27th, at his home in Chicago. He was 79. Photograph: Andrew Testa/The New York Times

Thu Apr 27 2023 - 16:19

Controversial talkshow host Jerry Springer has died aged 79. He was best known for showcasing dysfunctional families on The Jerry Springer Show, which ran from 1991 until 2018 in the US.

Springer had stepped down from The Jerry Springer Podcast, after eight years, in December.

Family spokesman Jene Galvin said in a statement: “Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried, whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word. He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humour will live on.”

Springer died peacefully at his home in Chicago after a brief illness, the statement added.

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His show reached its peak viewership in the 1990s. No matter what sort of drama had taken place in front of a studio audience and viewers tuning in from home, Springer ended each segment with a signature sign-off: “Take care of yourself, and each other.”

His series inspired the UK’s The Jeremy Kyle Show, which ran on ITV between 2005 and 2019.

Before Springer’s broadcasting career, which included stints as a political reporter and commentator, he was the mayor of Cincinnati, in the US state of Ohio, and a political campaign adviser to Robert F. Kennedy.

Gerald Norman Springer was born on February 13th, 1944, in a London tube station being used as a second World War bomb shelter. His parents were German Jews who fled the Holocaust, and he later spoke about how many of his relatives were killed by the Nazis in concentration camps.

Springer arrived in the US aged five and his family settled in Queens, New York City.

He studied political science at Tulane University in 1965 before going on to Northwestern University. His political career began when he was hired as a campaign adviser to Democrat Robert F. Kennedy. Springer ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 but was elected to the city council the following year.

A scandal relating to allegations he was using prostitutes failed to derail his upward progress – he won a council seat in 1975 and was made mayor in 1977.

In 1991 he launched his eponymous talkshow and upended the TV landscape. What began as a relatively traditional format, dealing with political issues including homelessness and gun ownership, transformed in early 1994 when Springer and his new producer, Richard Dominick, revamped the format in a bid to boost ratings.

For decades the show pulled in huge viewing numbers, despite widespread criticism of its content, and was credited with inspiring The Jeremy Kyle Show in the UK. It even topped US publication TV Guide’s list of Worst Shows In The History Of Television.

Springer retired the format in 2018 after some 4,000 episodes, and started a new programme with NBCUniversal called Judge Jerry. He remained a regular on TV, appearing on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? tracing the Springer family through the Holocaust to the small town of Neustettin, now in Poland.

In 2003 Jerry Springer: The Opera, written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, debuted in London. Featuring all the tropes of the TV show plus a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members, it won numerous awards including four Oliviers.

In June 2009, Springer made his stage debut as Billy Flynn in Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre, London.

Springer later admitted his TV show had been a “circus” and “nuts” but he also defended its more extreme content.

“In any population of 50,000 people you are going to have some people who are mean, some people that are crazy, some people that are racist, some people that beat their spouse,” he said at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2019. You can have all kinds of people.”

Springer was married to Micki Velton. They had a daughter, Katie, and divorced in 1994. – PA/New York Times/Guardian

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