During it 27-year run, The Jerry Springer show had no shortage of shocking exchanges on air.
The NBC talk show hit screens in 1991 and while it was initially considered unremarkable, a push by producers to ensure it wasn’t cancelled saw it embrace a shift to salacious stories, which then saw ratings skyrocket.
From cheating, incest and even bestiality, the show welcomed guests from across America willing to discuss their unusual, and sometimes illegal, relationships.
However, it was a pressure cooker for many as secrets were brought to light, with people frequently coming to blows and attacking each other on stage after airing their dirty laundry.
As one critic recalled of the jaw-dropping scenes: ‘It was like the modern version of the Roman Colosseum.’
Another said it was the ‘worst TV show of all time’, however its presenter Springer didn’t seem to mind and went on to proudly use that tagline to introduce the programme at the start of each episode.
Across the 3891 episodes, some of the wildest were titled ‘My Baby Daddy Has 12 Other Kids’, ‘Wild Sex with Your Sis’, ‘I Slept With 251 Men in 10 Hours!’ and ‘I Married A Horse!’. At one point, members of the Ku Klux Klan were even invited to appear.
However, in 2000 things took a deadly turn after a woman was murdered on the very day her episode went to air.
Her story is detailed in the new Netflix documentary series, Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, which ‘goes behind the scenes of America’s most controversial talk show to expose its biggest scandals, both on- and off-camera’.
Like many other episodes of the show, Nancy Campbell’s saw her face a cheating partner – ex-husband Ralf Panitz and his new wife Eleanor.
Despite their marriage being marred by instances of domestic violence, Campbell was hopeful an appearance on The Jerry Springer Show could see them reconcile.
After revealing she’d slept with her ex a few days prior, the tension between the two women was palpable, with Ralf then stepping onto stage and kissing both. It eventually emerged Ralf wanted to dump Campbell on live TV, humiliating her in front of millions.
As her son Jeffrey Campbell says in the documentary: ‘I don’t think my mother had any idea what she was walking into. They were there to ambush her, and she probably would have thought twice if she knew the title of the show, which was Secret Mistresses Confronted.’
‘Producers wanted them to get physical and she walked off set. Backstage she was told that if she didn’t go back on show they wouldn’t pay for a return ticket to Florida. She left anyway and ended up at a bus station with no money or anywhere to go. A Good Samaritan got her a bus ticket from Chicago to Florida but no-one from the show contacted her to see where she was or how she was,’ he explained.
After the taping of the episode, Jeffrey said his mum was ‘determined to get on with her life’.
However, a few months later she reconciled with Ralf, and he again became violent. She ended the relationship for the final time, then took him to court seeking a restraining order and to ensure he would be forced to leave her property.
That was two weeks before the episode aired.
On July 24th, Campbell was granted sole ownership of her home and a restraining order against her ex.
Although Ralf was reported to have left court ‘resigned and calm’, he then went to a nearby bar where their episode of The Jerry Springer Show was playing. Watching the screen, he then told a fellow patron he was ‘going to kill’ Campbell.
Later that evening he did just that. In a shocking act of violence, Ralf entered his ex-wife’s home and ‘choked her and stomped on her head’.
Jeffrey recalled police telling him her murder was ‘one of the worst scenes they’d ever encountered’.
Unsurprisingly the show, which had already been under the spotlight over the years, was again slammed by many, however, the broadcaster, host and producers took no responsibility for its role in the killing.
As Jeffrey said, Springer was ‘disrespectful and blew off’ what happened to his mother after telling reporters he didn’t even remember Campbell.
When handing down a life sentence to Panitz for the murder, the judge called the show ‘reprehensible’.
‘To Jerry Springer and his producers, I ask you. Are ratings more important than the dignity of human life? Shame on you,’ they added.
Despite the shocking murder, The Jerry Springer Show continued.
In the documentary an old clip is shown of the show’s long-time executive producer Richard Dominick declaring there is ‘no line to draw’ and that if he could ‘kill or execute someone on TV I’d do it’.
However, lawyers were worried about what would air going forward, advising against nudity being shown and wanting producers to ensure there was ‘no complaints or bad press’.
Inevitably viewers switched off as the tone of the show became more subdued, with others also pointing to a ‘shift in the culture’ as a reason for its diminishing popularity.
During its heyday The Jerry Springer show was attracting around eight million viewers an episode and even beat The Oprah Winfrey Show (at one point she labelled the show ‘appalling’.)
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By 2018 that had dropped to around 1.7 million, with the show then cancelled that year.
Springer died aged 79 last year. In 2023 he apologised for ‘ruining the culture’ with his talk show.
However, speaking on David Yontef’s Behind The Velvet Rope podcast he joked: ‘I just hope hell isn’t that hot because I burn real easy. I’m very light-complexioned, and that kind of worries me.’
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Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action is streaming on Netflix from January 7.
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