Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer | The Straight Man
4/23/202639 min
As his success on the nightly news in Cincinnati lands him his very own show, Springer struggles to stand out from the crowded field of daytime talk… until one strong-willed producer encourages him to take the show in a new direction.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
Tonight, an all-star celebration from the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, 25 years of Donahue.
Leon Neyfakh· Host0:08
[cheering] Phil Donahue is widely regarded as the father of the modern talk show. Jerry Springer was one of his children, and the two had quite a bit in common. Both got their start in Ohio, and for a while, they shared a corporate overlord, the Cincinnati-based Multimedia Entertainment.
John Kiesewetter· Guest0:26
Multimedia owned Channel 5, the station where Springer was at, and on their sister station in Dayton, they had The Phil Donahue Show.
Leon Neyfakh· Host0:35
TV columnist John Kiesewetter watched and wrote about both Donahue and Springer from his perch at the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Speaker 00:42
Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone on Donahue tonight. Something- Like Springer, Donahue began his media career as a local news anchor before emerging as a breakout star.
Leon Neyfakh· Host0:59
Donahue debuted in 1967, with an episode about atheism.
John Kiesewetter· Guest1:04
And he'd covered about every ism there is. L- lesbianism, nudism, uh, feminism.
Speaker 01:11
On the issue of gender reassignment, this, I assume, involves castration and removing all the evidence of, uh, male genitalia. So?
Jerry Springer· Soundbite1:19
Sounds awful, doesn't it?
Speaker 01:21
Yeah, it does. [laughs] It hurts me just asking the question.
John Kiesewetter· Guest1:24
[laughs] I mean, he did an hour on AIDS very, very early on. It was an