Jerry Springer, host of unapologetically brash talk show, dies of cancer at 79

NEW YORK – American talk-show host Jerry Springer, who went from a somewhat outlandish political career to an almost indescribably outlandish broadcasting career with The Jerry Springer Show, died on Thursday in suburban Chicago. He was 79.

By the mid ­1990s, the programme was setting a new standard for tawdriness on American television, turning the talk-­show format into an arena for shocking confessions, adultery-­fuelled screaming matches and not infrequent fistfights.

His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement by Mr Jene Galvin, a family friend and executive producer of Springer’s podcast. Springer’s publicist Linda Shafran confirmed to People magazine that he died of pancreatic cancer.

Springer earned a law degree from Northwestern University in Illinois in 1968 and started on a political career, winning election to the Cincinnati City Council in 1971.

But he was soon embroiled in the type of personal scandal that would later fuel his talk show. He resigned in 1974 after he was found to have written a cheque for prostitution services at a massage parlour. But Springer was nothing if not resilient: He was re-elected to the council in 1975.

One of his comeback speeches nodded to the prostitution controversy.

“A lot of you don’t know anything about me,” he said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. “But I’ll tell you one thing you do know: My credit is good.”

He was elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1977, and in 1982, he ran for governor of Ohio, addressing the prostitution incident forthrightly in a campaign advertisement.

“The next governor is going to have to take some heavy risks and face some hard truths,” he said. “I’m prepared to do that. This commercial should be proof. I’m not afraid of the truth, even if it hurts.”

He finished third in the Democratic primary and made a career change, joining WLWT-TV in Cincinnati as a news commentator. He later became an anchor and managing editor. Over the next decade, he won or shared multiple Emmy Awards for local coverage.

The Jerry Springer Show, a daytime talk show syndicated by Multimedia Entertainment, which owned WLWT, began in 1991. It was originally an issue-oriented programme.

The Los Angeles Times called it “an oppressively self-important talk hour starring a Cincinnati news anchorman and former mayor”.

By 1993, however, controversial lead-ins were turning up and the shock value just kept going up.

An episode in 1995 featured a young man named Raymond whom Springer was helping to lose his virginity, offering him five young women, hidden by a screen, to choose from.

The talk-show universe had by then become something of a free-for-all, with hosts such as Montel Williams and Sally Jessy Raphael also serving up salacious content.

Springer, though, did it better and more outrageously than anyone else. His viewership peaked in 1998 at about eight million.

“Why is it so outrageous that people who aren’t famous talk about their private lives?” he once said. “It’s like, ‘It’s OK if good-looking people talk about who they slept with but, please, if you are ugly, we don’t want to hear about it?’”

The Jerry Springer Show ran for nearly three decades, ending in 2018 after more than 3,000 episodes.

No matter what sort of drama had taken place in front of a studio audience, as well as viewers tuning in from home, Springer ended each segment with a signature sign-off: “Take care of yourself, and each other.”

Gerald Norman Springer was born in London on Feb 13, 1944, in an underground station that was being used as a bomb shelter during World War II. His family relocated to the United States when he was five.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Tulane University in 1965. He worked at WTUL, the campus station, and over the years he would check in from time to time.

“It was my first job in broadcasting,” he said in a message to the station in 2009 to mark its 50th anniversary. “And it’s been downhill ever since.”

After Tulane, he went on to Northwestern University and law school. In 1967, he took a job as a summer clerk at a law firm in Cincinnati – that was his first exposure to the city that would play an important role in his life.

The next year, he took time off from his law studies to work on US senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and completed his degree after Mr Kennedy was assassinated.

Springer returned to his family home in New York without any particular plans. When the Cincinnati firm where he had spent a summer called with an offer for a full-time job, he took it.

“I had to do something to get my life moving again,” he told The Cincinnati Post in 1977.

He quickly became involved in local politics, impressing the city’s Democratic leaders. In 1970, he ran for US Congress, losing but drawing 44 per cent of the votes. A year later, he was on the City Council.

Springer’s talk show brought him enough fame that he had a side gig as an actor, turning up in episodes of Married... With Children (1987 to 1998), The X-Files (1993 to 2002) and other shows, generally playing a version of himself.

He was also a contestant on Dancing With The Stars and The Masked Singer and, for a time, was host of America’s Got Talent.

In 2005, he began Springer On The Radio, a serious, left-leaning political show, on Air America. It lasted about two years.

Information on his survivors was not immediately available. NYTIMES