How Jerry Springer and his controversial talk show changed TV (for the worse)

It's 1998, and Jerry Springer is incredulous. 

"300 men?" he says with shock in his voice to his guest Jasmin St. Clair, who won the honor of appearing on the daytime talk show for breaking a "sex record."

"I thought the most outrageous thing I could do in this lifetime was to have sex with 300 men," St. Clair responds, casually. 

Outrage was certainly the name of the game. A  woman who cut off her own legs, a man who cut off his own genitals, cheating at weddings, violence on stage – it was all fodder for 27 seasons of "The Jerry Springer Show" on syndicated TV from 1991-2018. The show became synonymous with trash TV, guilty pleasures, strippers and little people. And a bespectacled man with notecards and a microphone reigned over the circus. 

Springer died Thursday at 79 from pancreatic cancer, and while he was briefly mayor of his hometown of Cincinnati, he will forever be remembered for the show that bore his name, for better or worse. 

"Springer" started out as a serious political program modeled after Phil Donahue, but flopped in the ratings. It quickly morphed into a tabloid extravaganza that sought out more outrageous guests with every episode. "It would be so hypocritical for me to say, 'That show is terrible,'" Springer once said. "I've always said it's stupid. It's just camp. It's chewing gum. It's an hour of escapism. It has no real value."

Obituary:Jerry Springer, controversial daytime talk show host, dies at 79

Despite that, "Springer" made plenty of money and notched big ratings over its 27-year run, inspired similar programs "Maury" and "The Steve Wilkos Show" and was endlessly parodied in popular culture. The antics, physical violence, nudity and provocative nature of "Springer" was a shocking addition to the television landscape in the 1990s. But for a time, it was beating another daytime juggernaut in the ratings: "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

By the 2010s, reality TV started to render the talk-show format obsolete, eclipsing it in audience, influence and craziness. The seediness viewers could once find only on the likes of "Springer" or "Maury" was now regularly available on MTV's "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," the syndicated  "Cheaters" and in any random YouTube video (or more recently, TikTok clip). Netflix's hit "Love is Blind" offers the kind of edge-of-your-seat sex scandal that "Springer" would have happily embraced.

More:Jerry Springer slammed Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis in 2020: Read our last interview with him

But it's arguable whether this entire genre, loosely incorporating seedier dating shows, "gotcha" shows and lurid true crime, would even exist without Springer. His "Too Hot for TV" brand expanded what we as a culture felt was acceptable to look and leer at. Sure, many people openly disdained Springer and his ilk, but the ratings didn't lie: People were watching. And they were hungry for more. 

Unfortunately, part of the series' success stemmed from trafficking in racial stereotypes, homophobia, transphobia and the othering of disabled people. In promos for episodes where he talked about the most "astonishing" and "shocking" guests he'd welcome, Springer would detail the lives of disabled and transgender people with lurid voyeurism, encouraging his rowdy audience to do the same. The most marginalized and vulnerable of people were often the butt of harsh jokes and sometimes actual violence (whether staged or unplanned). 

And while his series rarely reckoned with its influence on the audience's views and prejudices, Springer keenly understood the power of TV over the American people. The host, who had a career in Democratic politics before he became a broadcaster, was a vocal opponent of formerPresident Donald Trump, another reality TV veteran.  

"Yeah, he's a reality television star," Springer said of Trump in 2015, when he became a presidential candidate. "Which, by the way, is the reason he can do what he does. It's not because he owns hotels. He can go over the head of the Republican leaders and go straight to the people. The masses will decide, and it’s not always using the same criteria that the institutions would."

The masses certainly flocked to Springer, and Hollywood watched and learned, churning out TV shows that reflect his sleazy legacy. The genre became bigger than the man. 

And in 2023 and beyond, we're bound to see more of the television Jerry Springer has wrought.