TThere have been so many parodies since then that it’s strange to return to reality. And what’s even stranger is that the parodies never got off the ground. After all, where can you go when the original Jerry Springer show featured Diaper Bob, the Stripper Wars episode aired, and stories like “I cut off my manhood,” “My wife is sleeping with my aunt,” or “I “I’m pregnant?” enthusiastically horrified Springer audience.

These are the highlights – if that word can be used for a show that supposedly ushered in a new era of cultural decay – around which the documentary about the most notorious talk show in television history revolves. “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action” brings together the key players of the period and focuses primarily on the heyday of the 90s (the series ran, somewhat surprisingly, until 2018), when it was revolutionized by the “devilish genius” Richard Dominick . He only felt bound by the law when it came to deciding what could be checked. “If I could execute someone on television,” he says, “I would.”

Until Dominick arrived, the Jerry Springer Show was a quiet, harmless affair. Springer was a former city councilman and mayor of Cincinnati and a respected figure in local radio; His show was about debates about social issues and gentle reunions between long-lost family members. When NBC bought it and broadcast it nationally, the ratings that approach achieved were no longer sufficient. Enter Dominick and slide to the extreme. He convinced Springer to lighten his personal approach, convincing the audience to get to their feet and chant his name when he arrived on stage, and the producers to look for increasingly bizarre stories that would captivate viewers, who would browse through the channels, attract and keep them there. One of the best and most dedicated hunters was Toby Yoshimura, who turned to alcohol and cocaine to cope with the stress of the job and, ultimately, the moral compromises that came with it.

What’s remarkable about this documentary is the denial and evasion of responsibility that continues to this day among almost everyone involved in the show, despite footage of producers working guests into a rage before forcing them on stage to pursue the physical Fights that would become synonymous with the show. By and large, producers only remember the effort of finding guests and the excitement of the reviews. “We’re not trying to help anyone!” scoffs one. “Just hit those numbers!” If someone else remembers the “Springer Triangle” – the largely disadvantaged area from which 75% of the guests came – and the blandishments (limousines, hotels, meals) they used to help After being persuaded on a show, neither anger nor shame is visible.

It is controversial whether the jumper, who died in 2023, ever felt anything himself. Journalist Robert Feder believes “he knew every day of his life that what he was doing was beneath him and below his dignity” and believes that everyone “needed to know that when the guests went home, they were theirs.” Lives could have changed for the worse forever.” One can see in Springer that the supple political actor always comes to the fore when he is asked about his involvement, whether he responds with a deadpan “I don’t want to live in a country that sees my show,” or when he answers In the interviews in which the criticism of “trash TV” reached its climax, the answer was justified that television “should reflect all aspects of society”. At a Chicago city council meeting about the broadcast of violence, he says: “It’s a TV show – we’ll all survive it.”

This was probably not the case for at least one guest. In 2002, Nancy Campbell-Panitz was murdered by her ex-husband the day he saw the love triangle episode she and his new wife had recorded two months earlier. Her son says producers brought Campbell-Panitz there under false pretenses and refused to pay for her flight home when she failed to argue with the other woman.

From the perspective of 2025, The Jerry Springer Show may have damaged television and the culture at large, but it looks more like a mere precursor to the Internet, which has squashed all smaller attempts to race downwards. We would be here now regardless of whether the show existed or not. But perhaps fewer vulnerable people would have been injured or killed before the tool of global depravity arrived. And that would certainly have been worth something.