Last month on the Jerry Springer Show, just after one of the program's famous brawls and just before it cut to a commercial, a woman held a sonogram of her fetus up to the camera. For this most intimate image--a tiny figure in a woman's womb--to appear in the midst of another Springer spectacle was shocking. More than that, the incident marked the arrival on the program of what might be called the Forgotten Guest. One reason the show is so dramatic is that Springer brings out everyone involved in the affair at hand--all the secret lovers: male, female and transsexual. But even though pregnant women are a staple on the show, it's not usual for a child-to-be to appear. This time one did, reminding us that it would soon be arriving into the lives of the people throwing chairs at one another onstage.
The rise of the Jerry Springer Show is one of the wonders of the age. A year ago, its ratings were mediocre, but since then they have improved 183%. In February it became the first syndicated talk show to beat Oprah since that show became No. 1 in 1987. What makes this so remarkable is that Oprah had been routing the competition handily for so many years. In March 1995, for example, when the Ricki Lake show peaked, it had a Nielsen rating of 6.1; at the same time Oprah's rating was 8.8. Now both Springer and Oprah have ratings of 7.8.
What explains Jerry Springer's success? No doubt someone has a Theory of All Squalor stating that as politics becomes entertainment, and entertainment becomes reality, and reality becomes politics, then the leap from Monica Lewinsky to Jerry Springer is, well, something or other. Less ambitiously, we can offer this explanation: the fights. At the end of 1996, Multimedia, the company that syndicated the Springer Show, was sold and became part of the company now called USA Networks Studios. The USA executives were more liberal about what went on the air. Fights had often occurred but had been edited out; now they take up a large portion of every broadcast, and they clearly are not staged. The public can't get enough. Indeed, a Springer video showing back-to-back fights, along with cursing and nudity censored from the show, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Springer, 54, launched his talk show in 1991, having served as mayor of Cincinnati in his early 30s and then anchoring a local news show there. With curly red hair, round glasses and slightly nasal voice, he has a style that is less empathic than Phil Donahue's and less excitable than Geraldo Rivera's. He's the intelligent, slightly smarmy observer of the antics around him. This is the peak of his career, but that doesn't mean he's getting as rich as Winfrey. Major advertisers like Procter & Gamble shun his show, which can charge only about a third of what Oprah does.