Build Date: Tue Dec 3 23:10:08 2024 UTC
The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk they're sober.
-- William Butler Yeats
Jerry Springer Sanitized!
1999-05-26 05:23:46
There has always been a purity to the Jerry Springer show. Over the years, it has become nastier, and increasingly brutal, and it has come to represent the ultimate distillation of trash talk show television. A classic for all time! It was just too good to last. Now, the show has been castrated--right at the end of sweeps week...
The gossip talk show format may be evil, but the Jerry Springer show was the purest, most innovative example of the genre. And it had the highest ratings...
Unlike Sally, Montel, and Maury, who are stuck with the old formula, i.e., destroying people's lives on TV while pretending to help them, and unlike Oprah and Jenny who only do "nice" shows anymore with makeovers and cooking tips, Jerry has pushed the core aspects of the format -- sensational sex gossip, confrontation, violent outbreaks, weeping, public shame and humiliation -- to their limits. The Jerry Springer show is much more honest, more raw. Lately, even Jerry's signature moralizing at the end of the show has turned into little more than a commentary on who the guests were and why they were fighting, in case you couldn't figure it out based on who was stomping who.
In the last couple of years, the show has become a vicious fighting arena for hillbillies, degenerates, and freaks stupid enough to appear. The audience is little more than an angry, hopped up mob who would gladly stone the guests to death, or pelt them with rocks and garbage if they were given the opportunity. This year Springer has added a new twist: the guests have been physically attacking the audience and vice versa. Genius!
But all of this innovation and purity comes at a price. Jerry has been the focal point of the critics' and politicians' attacks on the whole gossip talk show format. And now USA Networks is running scared. Against the protests of local affiliate stations everywhere, they have been showing reruns of ancient Springer shows that have no punch. And worse, they promise to cut the heart out of the show, turning it into some kind of milquetoast, sissy Oprah shit.
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