Jerry Springer's Talk Show Evolution

A story about how Jerry Springer transformed from a political advisor and mayor to becoming the host of America's highest-rated daily talk show.

"At 25, Jerry was the adviser to Robert Kennedy during his presidential campaign. Then he went on to do local city politics and became the mayor of Cincinnati for a brief time. He got fired because he solicited a prostitute and got busted for it.

After being out of the political game in his thirties, he got cast onto local TV to do a political show. He did that for about three years, pretty unspectacular, until a new producer came in and said 'Look, it's a political show going nowhere, let's switch it up.' That's when the Jerry Springer Show was born.

The producer wanted to shift towards controversy and dirty laundry, making captivating TV by putting scandal on air. The show ran for 18 years. Jerry knew it was stupid, but his attitude was 'this is what people want and I'm going to give them what they want.' At its peak, it was higher rated than Oprah, becoming the number one daily show.

He also helped his friends succeed. His security guy Steve, who became a character on the show, they became best friends and Steve got his own spin-off show later. Interestingly, the show was actually the first to expose many Americans to LGBTQ people - for a lot of people in America, they had never met or heard of anybody from those communities before."